argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation and Liability for Housing Standards) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-01-19
Topic: Housing
Clive James Charles Betts (Labour, Centre-left): This is a problem: we are certainly getting a lot of evidence to that effect, and we are having our second evidence session next Monday The Government are bringing in more powers for local authorities to act, and they are welcome. They include, for example, the banning orders that will come into effect in April, which will affect the worst landlords—whose names ought to be up there in lights so everyone can see what they are up to. The Government’s decision to extend the HMO—houses in multiple occupation—definition of properties that need licences to properties with two storeys is right as well. I argued under the Labour Government for that definition, but unfortunately at the time we could not persuade Ministers to include properties of two storeys, so I am pleased this Government are doing that. It will mean more work for local authorities, however, as well as more powers. I hope the Government bring in the requirement that all private rented homes should have their electrical systems checked every five years, too. This consultation has been a long time coming, but I hope that that comes in as well. Again, however, it will mean more work for local authorities. The Bill essentially gives tenants powers to act, but in reality tenants are going to need support and assistance. They might contact the excellent Shelter telephone helpline, which is based in Sheffield, or Citizens Advice or other advice agencies, or they might go to their MP or local councillors, but very often they will go to their council to seek help and assistance. Although the primary requirement of this Bill is to give powers to tenants, in the end they might well go to the local authority, so with all the other—very good—measures that the Government are introducing, the extra powers for local authorities to take enforcement action and this Bill might put extra demand on local authority officers. The issue of resources is still fundamental to getting this problem sorted out. That will be raised as part of our Select Committee inquiry, and Ministers ought to be listening: without the resources, local authorities will not be able to offer tenants the assistance they need which would make this legislation effective.
Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation and Liability for Housing Standards) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-01-19
Topic: Housing
Helen Elizabeth Hayes (Labour, Centre-left): I want to draw the hon. Gentleman’s attention to the evidence that the Select Committee heard last Monday from Shelter, which said that, although the focus on rogue landlords was important, it was misleading to focus on them alone because the tenants experiencing poor-quality accommodation in the private rented sector were not limited to the relatively small number whose landlords could be described as rogues. Some landlords are inexperienced, lazy or negligent in carrying out their responsibilities but fall short of being rogues. These practices are nevertheless unacceptable.
Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation and Liability for Housing Standards) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-01-19
Topic: Immigration
Matthew Raymond Western (Labour, Centre-left): We see the accommodation that the hon. Gentleman describes in back gardens alongside the train lines coming out of London, but does he accept that that exploitation affects not only migrant labour? With student accommodation, there is a high level of churn within that community, with students staying in a property for a year or less. They are hugely exploited, just as migrant workers are.
Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation and Liability for Housing Standards) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-01-19
Topic: Housing
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Labour, Centre-left): Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there are problems in local authority housing stock when local authorities subcontract out the maintenance of their properties, often for very long periods, with inadequate scrutiny? Tenants who are responsible to the local authority are unable to do anything, and the local authority is often unable to reel in the contract. The Bill could help to provide more leverage for the local authority to step in.
Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation and Liability for Housing Standards) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-01-19
Topic: Housing
Matthew Raymond Western (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the hon. Gentleman for being so generous in giving way again. In my local authority, I understand that the budget for maintenance and repairs to local authority-owned properties in this financial year ran out before Christmas, so the authority is unable to make those repairs.
Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation and Liability for Housing Standards) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-01-19
Topic: Housing
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Labour, Centre-left): Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the 2017 Act is still not being enforced in many cases? At Christmas, a mother from my constituency was moved into temporary accommodation where the toilet was overflowing, and that situation stayed the same until I intervened; the local authority only took action after that intervention. That shows that the 2017 Act is too weak and that without resourcing for local authorities, without increasing the cap on housing investment and without proper enforcement, these are nice words, but they are unenforceable.
Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation and Liability for Housing Standards) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-01-19
Topic: Housing
Roberta Carol Blackman-Woods (Labour, Centre-left): My right hon. Friend is making a really powerful speech. Does he agree that the Government should be very grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) for bringing forward this legislation again and giving them an opportunity to overturn their previous opposition to the measures that he has outlined, including during the passage of the Housing and Planning Bill? Will he join me in pressing the Government to implement the measures in this Bill very quickly, because their resistance to them previously has meant that there has been a delay for tenants in getting the protection they very much need?
Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation and Liability for Housing Standards) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-01-19
Topic: Housing
John Healey (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is right. I hope that the Minister will acknowledge the opportunity that this Bill gives the Government. I would rather that it were a Government Bill that also went further to make the private rented market fairer. She is also right that there is too long a history of legislation being passed but implementation lagging. She makes a really important point for the Minister to respond to This is a welcome and significant shift that shows that Labour is winning the arguments and forcing Government to change policy. It shows that Ministers are coming to terms with the hard reality of our first minority UK Government in 38 years, with no domestic policy programme. That is because it is not covered by their deal with the Democratic Unionist party. If the Government want to act beyond Brexit, only policies that can command some support from beyond their own ranks will stick This Bill is an important first step to deal with the failures in a market that the Prime Minister herself describes as "broken", but more is needed. Alongside the Government’s backing for the Bill, I therefore urge them to rethink their refusal to help renters in other ways. I also urge them to consider backing the Labour plans for longer tenancies, for controls on rents, and for more freedom for councils to license private landlords My hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North said that everyone should have a right to a safe, warm, comfortable home. She is so right. We will give this Bill our strongest possible support.
Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation and Liability for Housing Standards) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-01-19
Topic: Housing
Lyn Carol Brown (Labour, Centre-left): 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.
Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation and Liability for Housing Standards) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-01-19
Topic: Housing
Lyn Carol Brown (Labour, Centre-left): 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.
Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation and Liability for Housing Standards) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-01-19
Topic: Housing
Catherine Elizabeth West (Labour, Centre-left): Will my hon. Friend join me in praising her local authority for leading the way? Other boroughs such as Haringey are now coming on board, with exciting new schemes to crack down on poor landlord practices.
Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation and Liability for Housing Standards) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-01-19
Topic: Housing
Lyn Carol Brown (Labour, Centre-left): Newham Council was absolutely right to take the action it did, and the Government were right to support it further. Only through such schemes, which are paid for by landlords, can we ensure that there is money for enforcement activity and that tenants can live in homes that are fit for them All our constituents deserve to have workable and realistic legal redress against landlords whose properties are dangerous, cold or damp. Giving tenants that help will ensure that the horrifying conditions we have heard about today will not be allowed to continue. I am delighted to support this Bill. It is about time that it progressed through the House, and I hope that will happen this afternoon.
Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation and Liability for Housing Standards) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-01-19
Topic: Housing
Rosemary Clare Duffield (Labour, Centre-left): This is such an important issue, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) on securing the debate and on all her tireless work on this issue over the past two years. I wish I could say that all homes in my constituency were fit for human habitation. I would love to be able to say that, but unfortunately I cannot. Sometimes, social housing provided for and on behalf of our local authority has the highest proliferation of category 1 hazards and other factors that put at risk people’s health and safety One example in Canterbury involves a lovely family who came to see me. They have three children and they found themselves homeless in November after their private landlord sold the property. Since then, they have been moved from pillar to post, from one unsuitable unhealthy property to the next. They have been moved five times in two months. How, in supposedly affluent Canterbury, in the supposedly affluent south-east, can there be so many places that are unfit for human habitation? One house provided to the family by the council was riddled with bedbugs crawling everywhere, and there was also a serious leak. The family’s mattresses and other belongings are now ruined, but they have yet to be compensated. The family were then moved to a house that had been freshly painted to disguise a serious mould problem. Now, their children are exposed to mould and fungus growing inside their home. It is around their beds, their clothes and their toys. We all know that damp and mould can worsen conditions such as asthma, eczema and chest infections, and articles published in The BMJ show that adults living in mouldy homes are also more likely to have symptoms such as fainting, headaches, fevers and even raised anxiety. I wanted to tell the House about that family this morning because I am disgusted by the way they have been treated and housed. I have put a video of their accommodation on my social media. Please go and see it; I promise you will be horrified. Any council that places people in accommodation such as that should be ashamed.
Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation and Liability for Housing Standards) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-01-19
Topic: Housing
Clive Anthony Lewis (Labour, Centre-left): I am saddened to hear about the way in which my hon. Friend’s constituents have been treated by the local authority in Kent, but would she acknowledge that not all local authorities are the same? My own Labour-led Norwich City Council has 15,000 properties, and not one of them has a category 1 hazard. In the private sector, however, nearly 3,000 of the 14,000 homes have a category 1 hazard, and they charge two to three times as much rent.
Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation and Liability for Housing Standards) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-01-19
Topic: Housing
Rosemary Clare Duffield (Labour, Centre-left): I absolutely acknowledge that. That is disgraceful Some of the providers in Kent are failing the public, but this is bigger than Kent; this is a national shame. As we have heard from the hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow), local authorities cannot enforce the housing health and safety rating system—the HHSRS—against themselves, and social tenants can often do very little about poor, unhealthy accommodation This Bill is important. It will prevent cases like the one I have described today and compel local authorities to carry out repairs, and I support it wholeheartedly. All social tenants and renters deserve accommodation that is safe. The old saying is that there is no place like home, but for many families in Britain that is true for all the wrong reasons. Let us change that today and make sure that all homes are fit for human habitation.
Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation and Liability for Housing Standards) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-01-19
Topic: Housing
Catherine Elizabeth West (Labour, Centre-left): Given that the private rented sector is composed of a plethora of small landladies or landlords, such as the hon. Lady, does she accept that people can be good landlords? We need good landlords and landladies, but we need good legislation and good enforcement.
Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation and Liability for Housing Standards) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-01-19
Topic: Housing
Andrew Francis Slaughter (Labour, Centre-left): I am delighted to support a Bill that will make a real difference to serious problems affecting millions of people who rent in the public and private sectors. Housing is 45% of my casework, and the largest proportion relates to house conditions. Unfitness beats disrepair as the major concern. Put simply, this is the biggest single issue for many Members whose constituencies have a large private rented sector I see damp, mouldy, draughty, infested and unsafe properties every week when I knock on doors in my constituency. It is utterly appalling and it affects the health, wellbeing and life chances of many of my constituents, and it has been getting steadily worse over the past few years, which is highly regrettable. I am delighted that, at last, there is a likelihood of getting this Bill on the statute book. As the shadow Secretary of State said, this is not the first time such a Bill has been before the House. The predecessor Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Bill, which was also introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck), was talked out in 2015. I suppose we should thank the usual suspects for staying away today to allow this Bill a fair wind Two years ago, in January 2016, my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) moved a new clause to the Housing and Planning Bill with similar terms to create a duty on landlords to ensure that properties are fit for habitation when let, and remain fit for habitation during the tenancy. En passant, I note that all but one of the Conservative Members who have spoken today voted against that new clause, so we welcome their contributions today. The hon. Members for Telford (Lucy Allan), for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), for Thornbury and Yate (Luke Hall), for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mrs Trevelyan), for Corby (Tom Pursglove), for Colchester (Will Quince) and for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow), and indeed the Minister, have all seen the light in the past two years.
Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation and Liability for Housing Standards) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-01-19
Topic: Housing
Andrew Francis Slaughter (Labour, Centre-left): Indeed. I would hate ever to be churlish in the Chamber, and I raise these matters only to rejoice at lost sheep who have been found. They have spoken so well today I do not wish in any way to delay the passage of this Bill today, but I want to make one serious point. Paragraph 32 of the explanatory notes states: "The Bill will not entail additional public expenditure, local authorities already have strong enforcement powers to tackle poor property. The aim of this bill is to enable tenants to pursue their landlord without recourse to their local authority." Many people have made the point that local authorities now lack the resources to do that, and that is part of the reason why we need to enable tenants themselves to do this, but these are often complex matters, legally and procedurally, to pursue. I ask the Minister to address that point specifically when she comes to speak In only two or three months’ time, we are due to have the long-awaited review of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, and I hope that part of it will look at whether legal aid can be extended to cover the provisions of this Bill. Indeed, I hope that we can go further than that, because, as has been established in review after review—in the Bach commission and the Low commission, and in what the Law Society, Shelter and Citizens Advice have said—the cuts in housing legal aid have been some of the most damaging. That applies to disrepair cases, where only "serious" disrepair is now eligible for legal aid. In fact, because the cuts are so substantial we often now have legal aid deserts as far as housing is concerned, and it simply is not possible, given how little is in scope, for private practitioners or law centres to offer the same degree of advice. That has to be looked at, and as part of that process we need to bring in the provisions of this Bill I always watch the Conservative party conference with great enthusiasm, so I noted that the Secretary of State said in his speech there that he was thinking of introducing a housing court as part of a simplification of the process for resolving housing issues. I do not know whether the Minister has any more to say about that, but we need a simple and straightforward process.
Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation and Liability for Housing Standards) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-01-19
Topic: Housing
Christopher Shaun Ruane (Labour, Centre-left): Is my hon. Friend aware that £22 billion is spent each year on housing benefit, with much of it going to slum landlords, who own houses in multiple occupation. A better solution would be to give part of the housing benefit bill to local councils to build properties on land that they own, so that—I hope hon. Members pardon the pun—we will have more bangs for our buck.
Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation and Liability for Housing Standards) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-01-19
Topic: Housing
Andrew Francis Slaughter (Labour, Centre-left): I could not agree more, although I do not want to be tempted too far away from today’s subject. Clearly the switch from investing capital sums in building decent properties, which happened under parties of all colours for many years, towards subsidising landlords—in many cases, bad landlords—has to be reversed at some point; that was a deliberate ideological step taken by Conservative Governments and it has served us very badly. That is a more endemic and chronic problem. This Bill resolves the immediate crisis that we have, particularly in the private rented sector. I look forward to the Minister at least saying what the Government are intending to do to enable tenants to pursue their remedy properly Let me end, as so many other Members have, by saying that we would not be here at this point were it not for my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North. She has championed this cause and this Bill over many, many years, and it is right that Members from both sides of the House have paid tribute to her today. I hope that we can now proceed to see this Bill become law.