My Lords, I am speaking as a former member of the Built Environment Committee; I was a member when the committee’s report was drawn up. I thank the chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, and his committee clerk for sending me a copy of the letter received by the committee this week, I understand, from the Minister who has accepted responsibility for this issue. It is, as it turns out, the Minister from DCMS. Before I go any further, I say that in a previous debate it was extremely frustrating for the Government Front Bench to reply, “Well, that was a matter for the Department for Transport”, and for no answer to be forthcoming. I hope we will not get into that dead end today, because this is a significant set of amendments on a significant proposal in the Bill. As this debate has already made clear, it has a very clear crossover into the housing market and the availability of housing in many areas of the country.
When the committee commenced its inquiry, it consisted of members with a very wide range of views—from those who had an extremely free-market approach to the housing situation and believed that the market would determine it, to those at the other end who thought that the best solution to our housing problem was a state allocation system. So, we had a very wide range of views in the committee, but we received such convincing evidence during the inquiry that it was not that difficult for us to produce a consensus report. The amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, are very much exploring with the Government their response to the committee’s report, and I have signed Amendment 441 in particular. The Government’s wording in the Bill is that the Secretary of State can propose regulations “requiring or permitting” local authorities to do something, but the amendment would delete “requiring” so that the Secretary of State’s regulations can only be about “permitting” them.
I am also privy to what my noble friend Lady Thornhill would have said if she had not tested positive for Covid yesterday: “My first major concern is that there are several ‘may’ or ‘must’ statements in the Bill, which could either require or permit action, and there is a world of difference between the two. We are being asked to agree a general principle and accept that there will be additional shorter consultations to bring forward a set of regulations on the details of how such a registration scheme would operate.” My noble friend Lady Thornhill shares my aversion to the Government having unfettered power and, on this occasion, even being able to restrict the time for consultation. The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, has spoken about that. I hope that the Minister, despite being from the wrong department, will be able to tell us what the outcome of that consultation process was.
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Both my noble friend Lady Thornhill and I would like to hear what the Government’s current thinking is on whether short-term lets should constitute a change of use and therefore require planning permission, or whether they should not. It is a key element in permitting some degree of local flexibility for any scheme that comes forward.
I am sorry to remind noble Lords that on several occasions so far in our discussions I have had something to say about the plethora of regulatory impositions that the Bill contains, and this has more, of course. I would like to hear whether there is any departmental working—anything in the pipeline—on the combined impact of all these regulations from different legislative provisions on councils’ ability to deliver what they are supposed to be doing. How open are the Government to responding to the fact that the need for action is very different in different parts of the country? Is the Minister fixated on a one-size-fits-all solution, either where everybody must or where everybody is forbidden to license or register as the case may be?
The committee took evidence from south Devon, where there is a serious problem, and my noble friend Lord Foster in the debate at the beginning of the week referred to a village known to him in east Suffolk where a very high proportion of homes are second homes or holiday lets. However, if one turned to the metropolitan boroughs of Knowsley or Halton, one would find, for all practical statistical purposes, that there are no second homes in those two boroughs, and no Airbnb or other short-term lets being advertised. That strongly suggests to me that the right approach is to have a permissive regime, not a compulsory one, and I believe that is soundly based on the evidence that the Select Committee received.
A key drawback of any national or uniform legislative outcome is that it requires resources, human and financial, to set up and run and to monitor and enforce. Several noble Lords mentioned registration fees; they can be set to cover the cost, and one of the amendments which I did not sign said they should be on a cost-recovery basis. However, that works only if there are sufficient homes—some might say too many—that need to be licensed in a particular area. How would the costs of setting up, monitoring and enforcement be covered in areas of low or very low prevalence of such homes? Either the measure becomes a complete dead letter because there are no resources to implement it, or the licence fee charged will have to be wholly disproportionate. We get to the strange situation where the fewer the homes, the greater the charge would have to be to cover providing that service.
Conversely, the evidence the committee took on Airbnb lettings is that they are significantly more lucrative in certain areas to those who own the properties than in others. Do the Government envisage authorising a proportionately larger registration fee to allow councils to cover their costs—including, of course, the costs of enforcement—or not? Quite clearly, the profit from these homes in some areas will be significantly higher than in others.
These points all raise warning flags about not overpromising that this government provision as it stands will be the solution to the short-term letting
problem. Indeed, you can ask a whole lot of other questions. Some have been posed by others, and others I could put into play now—but let us not do that.
All this suggests that the Minister might be well advised to try a couple of pilot schemes as a useful first step. Could she tell us whether she would consider that approach, or consider whether Wales has actually provided a pilot scheme because its scheme is discretionary? As I understand it, some local authorities in Wales have commenced a scheme while others have no intention of doing so at all. I realise that the Welsh scheme was not invented here, which may of course make it ineligible for consideration or comparison, but to do that might be time well spent.
I will briefly conclude by saying that I strongly support what my noble friend Lord Foster of Bath said about electrical safety. There seems to be absolutely no reason or argument to oppose his amendments, which would ensure that those who occupied short-term lets and dwellings, or indeed any accommodation, had a guarantee of a safe environment in which they could operate.