Housing and Regeneration Bill

My noble friend should feel well pleased by the response to his amendment. I align myself entirely with what the amendment tries to do. It provides a good opportunity to discuss broadly what the Bill means to tenants. We anticipated some of that debate when we addressed the issues raised the other day by my noble friend Lord Filkin. The noble Lord has put forward one mechanism for doing what he seeks. We, too, have put much thought into addressing how we make effective provision for the issues raised by tenants. It is very much work in progress for us. He will probably agree that designing a classical system for complaints to the regulator is not easy, and I appreciate the work that has gone into crafting the amendment. Perhaps I may just run over the broader argument. There is a whole set of powers and duties in the Bill, and essentially they add up to a new system which for the first time allows for tenants to be more involved in the regulatory process. Essentially, Martin Cave suggested that evidence from tenants should contribute to the regulatory process, and it is that point that the amendment seeks to address. In recommendation 12, he said that the regulator should develop a range of ways of triggering interventions in consultation with providers and National Tenant Voice. That was addressed to the regulator. He also said that triggering mechanisms should ideally be based on a combination of desktop analysis, references from tenants and other bodies, including local authorities, and whistleblowing. I have a great deal of sympathy with the amendment. I agree that the regulator should be responsive to tenants’ concerns and use evidence from them to justify its interventions, as Clause 98 permits. However, I think that Cave was proposing that tenants or selected tenant groups should be given a new statutory right to require the regulator to take specific action in relation to tenant concerns. When he talked to us on 2 June, he said quite clearly that his intention was to provide for a ““conveyer belt”” of information to be sent to the regulator so that it could better decide what to do. Let us look at the key features of a duty to address complaints. If the regulator is to be compelled to address them—bound by a specific duty instead of being trusted that it will seek evidence in an inclusive way—then there is immediate pressure for us to define what we expect it to do. What sort of complaints should it handle? We certainly all agree on one issue: a regulator can hardly handle every tenant complaint from 4 million social homes. We have always thought—a belief that I think is common around the Committee—that it should not be the regulator’s job to deal with most tenant complaints. They should be dealt with, first, by the landlord and then, if necessary, by access to the ombudsman. That is the correct route. Therefore, the regulator should be involved only where a tenant concern suggests a systematic failure to deliver. That might be on the basis of very few tenants who have identified a really serious problem, or it might be on a more general set of evidence. However, the whole issue is really about feeding evidence from tenants into the regulatory process. On the second issue of deciding when to act, Cave was very clear that these choices were especially difficult for any regulator. He said that it was for the regulator to determine how to act. Why would we have a skilled regulator with responsibility to balance its objectives if we did not trust it to make decisions on the process of handling and using evidence? I am absolutely clear that it has to be possible to treat evidence in a transparent, inclusive and fair way, but it is difficult to define an entire complaint procedure in statute. That is partly where the problem lies because inevitably one ends up with an inflexible and bureaucratic set of structures. We have tried to do it. Officials have spent a great deal of time looking at how the necessity for that instinct can be translated into something proper and proportionate. I turn to the details of the amendment. It requires the regulator to consider any complaint by a ““designated body”” or ““locally recognised representative body”” suggesting mismanagement by a provider which is detrimental to tenants. I am not at all clear why the amendment is concerned about a system of designation. The only power that a designated body seems to have is the right to make a complaint, which the regulator has to consider. It shares that right with locally recognised representative bodies. It is not clear here who recognises whom. There are some issues concerning the idea of designation. I am a little concerned about the idea of the centre designating some tenant bodies as conduits for information and not others. Since I have spent a lot of time in this Committee saying that this is not a centralised and bureaucratic structure, I am concerned that this is centralised, bureaucratic and rather burdensome. I want to explore the implications of the issue of designation. The amendment also says that the regulator should publish a response within 60 days saying what it intends to do and why, and that allowing the regulator to decide what to do requires the regulator to issue guidance to complainants on the presentation of complaints. It is not clear to me how that works, but all that will follow consultation. The amendment would also enable the Secretary of State by order to designate bodies representing the interests of tenants of social housing and would require her to publish criteria on designation. That is where the weight of the bureaucracy falls. The proposal has many good features. It has sound principles, such as the need to issue and consult on guidance, and the attempt to limit complaints that come to the regulator by filtering them through responsible bodies. I do not want to labour the point that I think the amendment in this form will not work; Members around the Committee have made it clear that they have issues with the content and the detail, but they are in favour of the amendment in principle. We should think hard about whether we want to create something that is inflexible but that also risks confusing tenants about who is responsible for addressing their concerns and sets up an unnecessary and rather divisive system of centrally designated tenant representatives. There would be risks in that, including legal challenge. This is where we end up. We have to be careful about the detail. We need to be concerned also about the burden on the regulator in terms of the wide range of objectives. Changing the system in any respect would require primary legislation because I do not know of any other regulators or public bodies with complaints systems that are so rigidly defined in law. I remember, when I was a Whip at the Department of Health, having agonising discussions about complaints procedures and how one could arrive at something that was successful but was also proportionate and effective. We have been considering how we can achieve these shared desired outcomes, giving the regulator more flexibility but also making it clear to the tenants how they can complain, what they can expect and how they will be treated in that process. I am inspired by what Cave said: that the regulator, not the Government or Parliament, should develop the detail of how the regulator should use evidence from key complainants to build a case against poor providers and of how he can work with the tenant voice and others. I sincerely hope that I can come back on Report with a way forward that will go some way towards meeting the concerns of the noble Lord as reflected in the amendment and ensure that, in a system moderated by the regulator, he is obliged to try hard—and to succeed, but in a flexible way—to establish a system that is generally responsive to the category of complaints that I have set out and will provide proper accountability to all stakeholders. With that commitment, I hope the noble Lord will feel confident that he can await Report stage, where we will continue the debate.