Housing and Regeneration Bill

moved Amendment No. 97PA: 97PA: After Clause 61, insert the following new Clause— ““Power to extend scope of Part 2 (1) The Secretary of State may make regulations providing for additional bodies to be included in the definition of English bodies. (2) In making regulations, the Secretary of State shall aim to ensure that the effect of including additional bodies in the definition of English bodies is to extend the regulation of social housing in England in accordance with this Part to include other providers of social housing; and in particular, the regulations may extend the regulation of social housing to— (a) a local housing authority within the meaning of section 1 of the Housing Act 1985 (c. 68) (local housing authorities), and (b) a person controlled by a local housing authority. (3) In addition to the regulations under subsection (1), the Secretary of State may by order provide for consequential changes to this Part which the Secretary of State considers necessary or expedient to permit or facilitate the regulation of social housing in England; and in particular, the order may modify or exclude the application of certain provisions of this Part to— (a) a local housing authority within the meaning of section 1 of the Housing Act 1985, and (b) a person controlled by a local housing authority. (4) In making regulations or orders under this section, the Secretary of State shall aim to ensure that the effect is to create a single regulator for social housing in England; and in particular, the Secretary of State shall enable the regulator to regulate local housing authorities and persons controlled by a local housing authority using powers provided under the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007 (c. 28). (5) The regulations or order under this section shall not be made unless a draft has been laid before and approved by resolution of each House of Parliament; and the regulations shall be made by statutory instrument.”” The noble Lord said: The two amendments tabled in my name, Amendments Nos. 97PA and 97PB, would give the Secretary of State the power at some later stage to extend the scope of the new regulator for social housing tenants to other bodies as well. At Second Reading, I made the point that the part of the rented sector most in need of regulation is the private rented sector. Tenants of private landlords, as we all know, can find themselves exposed to appalling practices with no protection from any regulator, in contrast to the position relating to the services they receive in their apartment, whether that is gas, electricity, water or whatever, and not even with the protection of a redress and ombudsman scheme. However, the Minister will be delighted to hear that I am not proposing to pursue this campaign any further within the context of this Bill since I understand that its scope is more limited than for the private rented sector and that battle must wait for another day. However, I think it extremely important that the role of the regulator is extended in relation to those other tenants within what is know as the social housing sector; that is, principally the tenants of local authorities, whether those tenants are in homes that the council continues to manage itself or in homes that are now run by ALMOs—the arm’s-length management organisations. Fortunately there is, I think, no disagreement on any side that the scope of the regulator should be extended to cover all tenants within the social housing sector. I am grateful to the Local Government Association and indeed to the Chartered Institute of Housing, the National Housing Federation, the National Federation of ALMOs and the Tenant Participation Advisory Service for their input to these amendments. There is unanimity among them that the regulator should cover all tenants in social housing, including those who are tenants of local authorities, for reasons of equity and to overcome the anomalies that would be perpetuated if tenants within the council sector remain outside the scope of the regulator and the tenants of housing associations are within in it. Perhaps I may illustrate how those anomalies work through. It is quite likely that someone will be almost randomly nominated by a local authority to a housing association or to the council’s own stock depending on where vacancies arise or the number of children the person has at that time. It is not necessarily the person’s choice: they will accept the social housing to which they are nominated. In other cases, people transfer. They move home. There will sometimes be a mutual exchange between tenants of housing associations and local authorities. People move between these sectors quite freely. The entire stock of some councils has transferred through large-scale voluntary transfers into the housing association sector. Many tenants of ALMOs may believe that they have moved outside the council sector but in fact they are still council tenants and within it. So anomalies abound. Indeed, it is possible that the existing tenants of ALMOs and joint venture local housing companies in future will not be covered by the new regulator, but that the tenants who move in, whose homes will have been provided with help from grant, will be brought within the regulator. So, even the same landlord or owner of the property may find that tenants are in different categories after this legislation is passed unless we can create what is known as a domain-wide regulator that covers comprehensively all those tenants in social housing. There is unanimity of view that this measure is needed. The question is when should we extend the role of the regulator. I think that the service is now to be called the Tenant Services Authority rather than Oftenant. That sounds like an improvement to me, though possibly the name will change before the end of the afternoon. At the moment, though, we are going for the Tenant Services Authority. But my fundamental question is: why should we delay in having at least an opportunity for the Secretary of State to bring forward at a later date measures to extend the scope of the regulator to cover all the tenants of social housing, including council tenants? I will not spend much of the Committee’s time arguing the case for the democratic process in itself being a sufficient protection for tenants to make it unnecessary at least to move speedily with this change, since very few people believe—and indeed the local authorities themselves, through the LGA, are not arguing—that council tenants should be put in a separate or different category because they have elected masters somewhere at the end of the line of accountability. Let me dismiss that potential argument and look at two other reasons that have been advanced for the delay in including something in this Bill to cover the extension of the role of the regulator. The first is that this measure is better dealt with in the legislation which will possibly be called the empowerment, economic regeneration and community Bill—I may have missed a word or two in that one. The Government have properly announced that they intend to introduce that legislation after discussion on a White Paper in the autumn. It would fulfil their original intention that, within two years, the role of the regulator will be extended to cover council tenants. One ground for holding back is that other legislation is in the pipeline and it should make its way through the process in a couple of years and bring those tenants within the same regulatory system. Professor Ian Cole—who with a number of colleagues has done much important work for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation which I greatly appreciate—has been looking at the practicalities of the extension of the role of the regulator. The group had its last meeting on Thursday of last week and its report, agreed across the piece, is winging its way to the housing Minister, Caroline Flint. It is likely that that report will say that the members of Ian Cole’s group are all agreed on the principle that one should press forward for domain-wide regulation, even if there are still one or two parts of the small print on which the arrangements that relate to council tenants would need to be different and refined in a couple of ways before the process is concluded. The group has been robust in working together to say that the time is right for this extension to happen as soon as practicable. I cannot see that the receipt of that report would lead anyone to form the view that the time is not right to include amendments to that end in this part of the Bill. The next reason why it might be said to be a bad idea to include clauses in the Bill to extend the regulator’s powers is that these are enabling powers for the Secretary of State. They are Henry VIII clauses and there is an aversion in your Lordships' House to enabling powers. To counter that charge, those of us who have brought together these two amendments have sought to hedge, surround and box in the provisions that would give the Secretary of State additional powers, for example making it very difficult for my hopes of the private rented sector being incorporated ever to be fulfilled through these clauses. If the Minister and her colleagues believe that different wording would do the job better, or if there is anxiety that this extends the powers of the Secretary of State too liberally, I am sure that the wording can be tightened. The hope is that the clauses are sufficiently restrictive to ensure that this is not simply giving the Secretary of State more powers than Members of the Committee would wish. The proposal is to do something that the Government already believe is good—extending the power of the regulator to cover all social housing tenants. It does so in a way that means we get a bird in the hand instead of one in the bush; we are not going to have to wait for two years for something that may or may not happen. It places in the Bill the chance for this to be triggered as soon as the negotiations—which I do not think are too far away—can be concluded between the different parties on exactly how the practicalities of this can be operated. It means that events will not intervene between now and the legislation that may or may not happen in a couple of years’ time. I think that it would make everybody happy. I hope very much that the Committee will agree. I have pleasure in begging to move.