Housing and Regeneration Bill

This is an important debate. I am grateful for the way in which it was opened, in competition, by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and the noble Earl, Lord Onslow. We had a productive meeting this morning, and I hope the noble Earl will forgive me, because these are complex areas, as we agreed this morning. My noble friend has just described them as rather awkward. I shall spend a little time explaining how we have come to our position and reassuring the Committee about the range of issues and the relationship between them. I will answer the two questions asked by my noble friend when I come to that part of my explanation. I will pitch my words primarily at Amendment No. 100 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, as it brings in the breadth of the issues raised by the Joint Committee. These are all subsequent amendments, to which we will return. Briefly, Amendment No. 100 would make the provision of social housing a public function for the purposes of Section 6 of the Human Rights Act. The substance of it arose from the report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights at the end of April. Amendments Nos. 103 and 104 were also recommended by the Joint Committee on Human Rights. They are consequential, so I will deal with them in passing. I will not deal with Amendment No. 106 in the group. We will come back to that, because I have some good news for the noble Earl. Amendment No. 99A goes rather wider than Amendment No. 100, because the noble Baroness seeks to make all registered providers of social housing public authorities for the purposes of the HRA. That would mean that all functions performed by registered providers would be public functions for the purposes of the HRA. As I said, Amendment No. 100 was originally recommended by the Joint Committee, to which we are very grateful for going into these complex areas with the clarity and depth that it did. It has made an important contribution to Parliament’s scrutiny. The noble Earl started by referring to the case of YL. I will conclude with that, if he will bear with me, because I want to make clear the distinction between social care and social housing in its context. The Joint Committee’s report proposed amendments to three areas of the Bill: first, the application of the Human Rights Act to the provision of social housing; secondly, the regulator’s information-sharing powers; and, thirdly, the current incompatibility in the homelessness legislation following the Morris judgment. We will deal with them in sequence as they arise in the Bill. I cannot accept the amendment, because it proposes that the provision of social housing should be deemed a public function under the Human Rights Act. I will make it absolutely clear why. My arguments are based on logic and principle. I will come to the funding issue later, but that is a consequence rather than an issue of principle. The noble Baroness talked about the level playing field, and she is quite right to raise those sorts of issues. We strongly agree that social housing tenants need to be protected. Indeed, that is what the Bill is about. Our tenants are already protected, not least through their tenancy contract, which normally offers an extremely high level of security and protection. In addition, we are now giving social housing tenants real protection for the first time in different ways through regulation. The second objective is to ensure that actual and potential social housing tenants have appropriate protection. The remainder of Part 2 gives the regulator the powers that it will need to ensure that tenants are protected. It covers the ability to set standards, to investigate problems, to enforce regulation in the event of breaches, and so on. In answer to the point made by my noble friend, it is perfectly possible for those standards to include even requirements that landlords act on the same principles that might be covered by the HRA. I should stress that it is up to the regulator, but my noble friend has made a significant point in that context. The second question my noble friend raised related to the HRA itself. As a public authority, the regulator will be subject to the HRA. The noble Lord’s amendment needs to be seen in that wider context. The definitions of ““public authority”” and ““public function”” are crucial. Noble Lords will be aware that adherence to the Human Rights Act is compulsory only where a body is a ““public authority””, or where it is undertaking functions of a public nature. So HRA duties arise not only where bodies are obviously public—the historic example is local authorities—but where any body performs a function that is of a public nature. We can bring the housing associations into that category because they perform one function which is of a public nature. However, an important difference is that everything a local authority does will be considered a public function because it is a public authority, whereas for a housing association, as a private sector body, some functions may be of a public nature and others will not.