Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-11-23
Topic: Housing
John Horam (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, we are all grateful to my noble friend Lord Best for piloting this limited but important Bill through the House of Lords. As he said, we are also particularly grateful for what he rightly described as the heroic efforts of Karen Buck, the Labour MP for Westminster North, for conceiving of this Bill and taking it through the other place highly successfully. I had 31 years in the other place and in all that time never managed to get a Private Member’s Bill through, so I know how successful she has been in doing that The Bill, as my noble friend said, also has the support of Shelter, the Landlords Association and, most importantly, the Government. I am glad to see the Minister in his place listening attentively, as he always does. Indeed, the degree of cross-party support on this might have been a feature of other arguments we are having on a wider scale at the moment, but sadly Brexit does not seem to be producing that degree of understanding It is truly appalling that we have 1 million families—2.5 million to 3 million people—living in private or social rented accommodation with category 1 hazards. As my noble friend Lord Best said, category 1 properties pose a serious and immediate risk to a person’s health and safety. Although part of this problem is in the social sector, as was tragically revealed by the Grenfell incident, most of it is in the private sector. Three-quarters of the people living in this category are in the private rented sector We simply have really inadequate old properties badly renovated to low standards, often by absent landlords seeking to maximise their income by splitting an old house into as many small spaces as possible and then not maintaining it properly. This is the real issue here. In many ways, housing benefits contribute to this problem and make it more difficult to make the necessary renovations. My memories go back to the Rachman period in the 1950s, and of course Karen Buck represents in Parliament the North Westminster area—and previously represented Kensington North—where that was evident. It still exists in our big city areas It is also a problem in seaside resorts. Many of us got in the post today the excellent agenda 2030 brochure put forward by the pride of place team from Blackpool. I know Blackpool well; I was born in Preston, not far away. Blackpool has eight of the 20 most deprived neighbourhoods in the country and much of that is property of this kind. What were once bed and breakfast hotels have now been converted into appallingly low-standard accommodation of the kind we are concerned about. The Bill will extend the definition of what is fit for purpose—that is, fit for human habitation—and will also extend people’s right to take a bad landlord to court, but the truth is this is just a Bill and a very restricted Bill. We need far more if we are going to deal with this problem satisfactorily As was pointed out in the letter that many of us will have got from the leader of Blackpool’s pride of place project, "Many of the tenants living in the private rented sector … are vulnerable, lead chaotic lives and would lack the confidence to commence legal action against their landlord. For the proposed legislation to be used effectively by tenants, extra resources would need to be made available to local authorities or voluntary sector advice agencies, like the Citizens’ Advice Bureau or Shelter to support the most vulnerable tenants in taking their landlords to Court" I know that well from my own constituency experience, both in Gateshead and in Orpington. People in this category do not think of going to a solicitor. They lack the confidence to do that, they have no contacts and their first thought is to go the CAB, their local council or a Member of Parliament. We need resources for those voluntary agencies to help them effectively. As the noble Lord, Lord Best, touched on in the latter part of his remarks, this is part of a wider issue with housing, not just related to substandard private rented property, which we have to tackle I made the point in my speech in the Budget debate that this is part of the poverty issue that so disfigures our country at the moment. It exists, and we have the resources to do something about it. It will mean raising taxation, but we should not forget that we are a comparatively lightly taxed country. We only take about 35% of our national income in taxation. In Germany it is 39%, in the Netherlands it is 41% and in France it is 47%. That is the difference between this country and other neighbouring European countries, and the extent to which we can tackle these problems because we have the resources to do so. It could be done if we had the willingness to raise taxation. In this case, for example, we could probably put a couple of extra layers on the council tax for higher, more expensive property to raise the money to give councils the funds to deal with this problem I wholeheartedly support the Bill and hope it goes through unamended. I also wish my noble friend on the Front Bench well, because I know his heart is in the right place, in his and his colleagues in the department’s discussions with the Chancellor, because I believe that the Chancellor has to provide the funds to deal with this aspect of poverty as well as other aspects. I hope they will be forthcoming in the next Budget. They were a little in the last Budget, but we need a far bolder and more radical approach in the next Budget.