Gareth Thomas
MP for Harrow West · Labour (Co-op) · United Kingdom
“Local councils such as Harrow need to invest more in youth facilities that divert young people away from crime. Some of the CCTV projects in my constituency that Harrow council has turned down—in Wealdstone, south Harrow and central Harrow—should get funding.”
“I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Pendle and Clitheroe (Jonathan Hinder) on securing the debate and on the way in which he approached the subject. I join him and my hon.”
“I also want to suggest that the Metropolitan police does not get recognition across the whole of the UK for its hugely important work in tackling national and international crime, and that perhaps more recognition of that is required in the funding formula.”
“In particular, in Harrow, we recently saw enforcement teams contracted out to an organisation called Kingdom. The responsibility for that contract was with Harrow council. There was widespread criticism of the way some of the staff employed by Kingdom tried to levy fines on a number of young people in south Harrow, in my constituency.”
“One way we can further support the Metropolitan police is by allowing it to keep more of the proceeds from successful operations, such as recovering stolen funds hidden in bitcoin assets. I congratulate my hon.”
“Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has done a huge amount to try to redirect funding from other parts of his budget to minimise the impact of that cut.”
The complete record
Every one of 7,011 lines we hold for Gareth Thomas, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 78 of 141.
“Sir Alan, I have sought a stand part debate to raise the issue of the price of land. It may seem odd, having been broadly in support of clauses 8 and 9, to suggest that we need a debate on the merits of clause 9, but I worry that, on the basis of evidence that the Opposition presented to the Lyons review, the cost of land may be a significant deterrent for many would-be self and custom house builders, and that granting permission in principle may inadvertently drive up the cost of land. That is the issue I want to persuade the Minister to mull over.”
“I triggered this debate in order to ask the Minister to dwell on the concern that if permission is given in principle, even just for self-build designated slots, there is a risk of pushing up the price of that land—the acquisition of land is currently one of the biggest deterrents to broadening the self-build sector. The Minister gave an interesting justification for clause 9 standing part of the Bill, much of which I am sure is perfectly reasonable, but he did not answer the particular concern I raised. I would be grateful if he might dwell on that point and come back to me.”
“I draw the Committee’s attention to the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Why should only a housing authority be able to seek a banning order? Why should not a tenant, for example, make an approach to the relevant tribunal?”
“I do not understand. Why should not the tenant be able to do so as well? I get the logic of saying that the housing authority should have the prime responsibility for doing so, but why should not a tenant who is feeling particularly victimised be able to make their own approach directly? We on Opposition side of the Committee are often accused of being in favour of the big state or the nanny state. I ask the Minister gently whether he is not in danger of being accused of the same thing by not being willing to empower tenants to take their own route to seeking justice.”
“Friend’s amendment would at least force local authorities to consider whether there is a need to take action. In that sense, it would be a useful annual prod to get local authorities to do a bit more in this area.”
“Member for South Norfolk sees housing authority staff, he sits down and talks with them at some length about self-build and custom house building. Presumably, given his importance and the esteem in which he is held, it requires a considerable effort by those staff to deal with his inquiries. What my hon. Friend’s amendment will do is gently rebalance perhaps the enthusiasm within South Norfolk housing authority to focus on the needs of tenants, as well as dealing with his concerns. As I alluded to, there might be an authority—a Bexley or Bromley, perhaps, in London—that is so pro-landlord that it cannot envisage rogue landlords operating in its space. Given that the Minister is determined—it seems to me, at least—to adopt the nanny state approach and not allow tenants themselves to go to the first-tier tribunal, my hon.”
“I rise to support the amendment and to add one or two brief thoughts. What would my hon. Friend, who spoke to the amendment in a very consensual style, think about a local authority that has not rushed into taking action against landlords because, for ideological reasons, it does not think it should or because the burden of other legislation in this time of significant cutbacks is too much for it to prioritise taking action against rogue landlords? The amendment would create that additional bit of pressure to ensure that local housing authorities always think of the need to consult tenants on an annual basis about whether rogue landlords are in action and whether the authority should act on that. Let us take South Norfolk Council as an example. Presumably whenever the hon.”
“I have never associated the hon. Gentleman with the nanny state tendency in his party, so I wonder whether I might divert him from what is an interesting point to suggest that, as well as there being good housing enforcement agents in his own authority, there must surely be tenants who on occasion might have the capacity or the desire to go to the tribunal themselves and seek action against bad landlords. Why does he not support those tenants having the right to do so?”
“I absolutely see the argument that the housing authority should have the prime responsibility, but perhaps the Minister could reflect on whether a small number of additional organisations could be designated by the Secretary of State to take forward cases where there is not an obvious fit to an individual authority area and where they clearly have particular expertise.”
“Perhaps in a certain, narrow number of cases a designated organisation—clearly one of good repute, with expertise and experience of going to the first-tier tribunal, so that it is not clogged up with poorly thought-through cases—might be able to bring forward an argument on behalf of a group of tenants to make the case for a banning order. Perhaps individual housing authorities might not want to bring a case where a rogue landlord is operating across a series of housing authorities, whereas an organisation with a London-wide remit or a national remit might be more willing to spend the resource to gather evidence to go to the first-tier tribunal.”
“In this case a housing advice charity or a major charity such as Shelter would perhaps get access to information about very poor landlords who the local housing authority might not know about. I am minded in moving this point to draw the Minister’s attention to a parallel situation in consumer law. Individual consumers cannot go to court when there is an allegation of price fixing of consumer products, but organisations such as Which? can do so on their behalf. I wonder whether there is a parallel here that the Minister might want to contemplate.”
“I am grateful for the opportunity to come in here. After the touching and moving tribute that the hon. Member for Peterborough paid me, I feel duty-bound to intervene on this clause too. I draw the Minister’s specific focus and attention to subsection (2), which is the requirement that the banning order be made on application by a local housing authority only. I do not want to dwell on whether or not a tenant should have been allowed to do that, but perhaps I might ask the Minister to reflect on whether certain organisations other than the planning authority might have been allowed—or might still be allowed—to bring forward an argument to the tribunal for a banning order against a person.”
“What the Minister says is absolutely true. I would encourage him to dwell on this and perhaps return to the point on Report. Why will he not allow a Shelter, or the Harrow Law Centre, for example, to bring forward their own argument on occasion? They work with housing authorities on cases that the local authorities bring forward; why can they not initiate action themselves? I am bringing the Minister specifically to the cross-borough point. Why is he not willing to consider Shelter, for example?”
“I understand the concern about civil and criminal law and the first-tier tribunal as opposed to the magistrates court, but if a landlord were taken to the magistrates court and convicted of poor practice towards a tenant, why could the magistrates court not refer the case to the first-tier tribunal to consider the rent repayment order? At least in that way, it would achieve the spirit of what the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead seeks to tease out.”
“If they are going to take action quickly against rogue landlords, inevitably there will be a desire within housing authorities to know that the sanctions imposed on those landlords have real and significant teeth that will be a real deterrent to the often very rich individuals who benefit from very poor behaviour, and get them to change their behaviour. At the moment, particularly in London, where rents are so expensive, we run the risk of fines just being written off as a business expense. I encourage the Minister to look with favour on my hon. Friend’s amendment, to send a much stronger and stiffer signal to stop criminal and other bad behaviour.”
“One of those convicted was a man called Andreas Stavrou Antoniades, a landlord who converted a north London terrace into nine flats. He was given the maximum fine at the time, some £20,000—the equivalent of little more than two month’s rent from one property. The article goes on to say that the campaign group Generation Rent has suggested that criminal landlords rake in some £5 billion in rent a year. The Minister has said that there are, in his estimate, some 10,500 rogue landlords. Clearly, if there is consensus on the Committee that we want action against those rogue landlords, we need housing authorities to move quickly.”
“I support my hon. Friend’s amendment and I shall quote a number of examples which have received coverage. They are examples of rogue landlords and how they have been dealt with by the courts. I draw attention to an article in the Conservative party’s newspaper of choice, The Guardian. According to that article, figures released last summer through a freedom of information case against the Ministry of Justice reveal that there were just over 2,000 convictions of rogue landlords between 2006 and 2014—that is, nicely, the last four years of a great Government and the first four years of a dismal Government for us to look at. The resulting fines in those 2,000 cases were just £3 million—less than £1,500 per conviction.”
“I give credit to the Government for wanting to bring forward legislation to deal with the issue, but I gently suggest that we need to make sure that those we are going to vest with legislative power to do more against rogue landlords have the resources available to them, so that they have the means to take action and use these powers. My humble amendment perhaps offers a small glint of light to hard-pressed housing authorities that there will be some additional resource that they might get as a result of their efforts to bring bad landlords to justice, which they can use to reinvest in taking further measures against other rogue landlords.”
“My amendment seeks to ensure that the resources that are recovered as a result of clause 17 go to the housing authority, so that they can be invested in action against rogue landlords, and so that there can be confidence that we will see progress in getting the Minister’s figure of 10,500 rogue landlords down to a better limit, more quickly. It cannot be that any of us would want to have such a large figure of rogue landlords operating, feeling that they can do so willy-nilly and that if they get taken to task by the courts, that will almost be by accident. I think the Minister said that he expected just 600 cases a year as a result of the new legislation. That suggests that it will take us a very long time before we can eliminate the full list of rogue landlords.”
“Quite rightly, the Minister alluded to the fact that, as a result of this legislation, it would be incumbent on housing authorities to take action whenever they see a rogue landlord in action and can gather evidence of malpractice. I suggest to him and to the Committee that we have to live in the real world. In a case of declining budgets and cuts, local authorities on occasion have to make tough choices, and it may be that other parts of a housing authority’s responsibilities have to take precedent. Although some prosecutions may take place, there may be other prosecutions that might not go ahead, if additional resources are not available.”
“I beg to move amendment 94, in clause 17, page 10, line 27, leave out subsection (7). This amendment would ensure local housing authorities would be able to retain any financial penalties recovered under Clause 17. I hope that the Minister continues to feel in a sufficiently good mood to consider this amendment with enthusiasm. If he wanted to intervene on me very early on and say that it is indeed his intention that local housing authorities will be able to retain any financial penalties recovered under this clause, clearly I would not need to dwell any further on the case for the amendment. As he has stayed firmly in his seat, focusing on his notes, let me make the case a little further.”
“In the spirit of the Minister’s response, I see no reason to press the amendment to a vote. Consultation is a wonderful thing, but I struggle to see why the Minister needs to consult. Why can he not write it clearly into the legislation that the money recovered will go to the local authority? However, I recognise that is the Government’s intention and I welcome the clarification. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Question proposed, That the clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill.”
“I welcome the clause but wonder whether it goes far enough. For example, will the power to require information to be provided for the purpose of entering somebody on the database be extended to HMRC—is it already having to provide information to make a judgment? Where a housing authority is not sure whether someone else is part of an organisation that is acting as a rogue landlord, will it be able to be subject to the same power to require information as someone who is clearly the main focus for this particular power? Will it just have to be directed at one person, or can other people be covered by it; and are a series of other public bodies going to be covered by the power to require information as well?”
“I understand the Minister’s point. If the housing authority has suspicions that an individual may be a rogue landlord, they might be able to make a better judgment about where a person’s income is coming from, how extensive their assets are, and so on if they could access information from HMRC. Under this clause, could the planning authority make a request of HMRC and expect HMRC to have to respond to provide that information?”
“We would expect a rogue landlord to have had some dealings with HMRC. We would certainly expect a rogue landlord to have bank accounts or to have had some history of dealing with the big banks. Why should the housing authority not be able to engage with those bodies and expect sensible, serious answers to their requests for help about named individuals?”
“If we are really going to crack down on this and take it seriously, as I know the Minister wants to do, we have to make sure that housing authorities have all the powers they need. If the clause does not cover the potential for a housing authority to make a reasonable request and expect that body to provide information back, the Minister might want to reflect before Report on whether the scope of the clause needs to be broadened. I think of constituents of mine who have got in touch with HMRC and have struggled to get a coherent answer back. Of course, the local housing authority can put in a request now, without any additional powers, but there is no guarantee that HMRC would reply in good time for that housing authority to make a judgment as to whether a rogue landlord is operating in their vicinity. I ask the Minister to reflect.”
“The potential rogue landlord must have a bank account somewhere, so could Harrow council, wanting to exercise its powers here to crack down on any rogue landlords operating in Harrow, use this clause to go to HSBC or Lloyds Bank and say, “We have real concerns about individual X being a rogue landlord, but we need to check out what their level of income is and where that income appears to be coming from. Could you provide the following information to us?” I would have thought that that is a reasonable request from a housing authority wanting to get a grip on these 10,500 rogue landlords the Minister spoke about, some of whom, presumably, must be in each of our local authority areas.”
“I am grateful to have the opportunity to speak on the stand part debate. I would not want to give the impression, Sir Alan, to you or to Conservative Members, that I oppose the clause. I think it is a worthwhile additional power. It prompts the question, though, whether housing authorities will be able to have enough access to potential sources of information about possible rogue landlords. I used the example of HMRC, but perhaps the example of the banks might be an appropriate one to offer up.”
“Not that it will affect how I decided to vote on this issue, but it would be illuminating to discover whether the Mayor of London and his housing adviser support these two amendments.”
“It is worth pointing out some statistics from Shelter, which reports that 25% of Londoners rent privately and that figure is expected to rise by 2020, when the next Labour Government will be elected, to one in three, which is all the more reason urgently to seek to drive up standards in the private rented sector. Although clause 30 is merely about access to a database, I encourage the Minister, when reflecting on the debate we have just had on clause 29, to ask his officials and organisations such as Shelter whether there might be merit in requiring other statutory bodies to support the database and to provide information to it.”
“I rise to speak in support of the hon. Gentleman. I hesitate to destroy his career by doing so, but if it offers him any help, I will now champion his future career, so that his Whips are hopefully unable to spread doom and gloom about it. This point about the London rental standard is important, because, good thing though it is, it does not seem to be having a huge impact. The brutal truth is that the Mayor had hoped to have 100,000 landlords registered by the end of next year. At the end of last year, as I understand it, about 15,000 were registered, at best. That does not suggest that the Mayor is on course to succeed in his aim of having 100,000 landlords or letting agents signed up, which, given the scale of the housing crisis and the importance of the private rented sector in London, is a real concern.”
“We are, after all, talking about London and whether the London rental standard might benefit from the amendments moved by the hon. Member for Wimbledon. I simply urge the Minister to embrace with enthusiasm the concerns expressed by colleagues on the Conservative Benches about the database.”
“I might do that on Report, now that the hon. Gentleman has encouraged me. However, hopefully in the interventions that I have made, I might have encouraged the more reasonable of the two Ministers to fight the fight within the Department and strengthen the teeth that are available to housing authorities to fight this problem. I do not know whether the hon. Member for South Norfolk, when he meets housing officials in South Norfolk Council, talks about these issues. I know that he talks to them a lot about self-build and custom build—that is excellent news—but does he go into detail about the powers that they will have under the Bill in other areas? I hope that he does, and if he has not up till now, I hope that he will in future. I apologise to you, Sir Alan, as I think I have been led astray by the hon. Member.”
“I am grateful for the opportunity to speak again. I do not understand why the Mayor of London should be such a controversial figure for the Minister not to want to share information. I appreciate there needs to be a bit of thought, and I appreciate that the Minister of State has been a bit grumpy today and that may be precluding the Parliamentary Under-Secretary’s room for manoeuvre. However, I hope the hon. Member for Wimbledon will be sufficiently robust in his attitude to the Minister’s answer to fight the cause for London and say that we need to make a decision now to strengthen the London rental stake.”
“I do not want to be seen as in any way chastising my hon. Friend, but while the hon. Member for Peterborough was indeed right to say that, proportionately, a relatively small number of landlords are rogue, the Minister alluded to a figure of, potentially, 10,500. That is by no definition a small number and suggests that there is a serious problem, although it nevertheless involves a small percentage of landlords.”
“Is the Government’s approach not indicative of the Conservative party’s nanny state tendency? Nanny knows best, so tenants should not have access to the information, but the housing authority should. It seems a classic example of the worst form of the nanny state in action.”
“Would not another benefit of the amendment be that Members of Parliament and their researchers and caseworkers would be able to access the information? I suspect that all members of the Committee—certainly Opposition Members—hold regular surgeries and have large numbers of people coming to them who are concerned about the private rented sector. If our staff could access information on the database, Members might be able to provide even better advice to constituents on whether to approach a housing authority to take action against a landlord or to have a direct conversation with a landlord about how a problem with a property might be sorted out.”
“Were the Government not to accept the amendment, is there not a further potential problem, related to freedom of information legislation? Presumably, freedom of information legislation would cover submissions to the relevant official in the housing authority who was drawing up or was responsible for putting information into the database, so a dedicated and disciplined Member of Parliament could put in FOI requests and get access to the information anyway. Why not save us all the trouble and accept the amendment in the first place?”
“Members on both sides of the Committee have the capacity, through their experienced staff, to apply under FOI legislation to see which people are covered by the database—albeit it is intended to be used only for research—it would surely be better for the Minister to save housing authorities some time and simply accept the amendment. I could envisage a situation in a year’s time, when the Bill has gone through, in which my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich is approached one Friday in his surgery by a constituent who is worried about the quality of accommodation that he is seeking to access. My hon. Friend might be tempted to put in a freedom of information request to see whether the landlord of that accommodation had in any way come to the notice of the Greenwich housing authority.”
“I have written to the chief executive seeking clarity on the association’s intentions but have yet to receive a coherent answer or have the courtesy of a meeting with the relevant decision maker. If the hon. Gentleman was proposing that, now that housing associations are part of Government for the purposes of ONS stats, freedom of information legislation should apply to them, I would be tempted by that argument. He will, I am sure, be grateful to me for tabling amendment 99, which we will come to later in our considerations. It might provide a useful opportunity to have that discussion and a chance for him to set out his views one way or t’other. The crucial point of amendment 106 is that if, as I suspect, hon.”
“I am grateful to have caught your eye, Sir Alan. I welcome the intervention by the hon. Member for Peterborough and hope we might hear a little more from him about his concerns about freedom of information and housing associations. In answer to his question, I must confess that I have not yet made my mind up, but I am tempted to say yes when I wake up in the morning and think about the activities of A2Dominion. That organisation is a housing association in my constituency that has been very slow to sort out the problems at Bannister House, where a number of its tenants and leaseholders have been suffering over the past eight years from a consistent pattern of leaks.”
“Member for Peterborough may not be and he may use the opportunity, if he has been approached by a constituent who is worried about their landlord, to put in a request under the freedom of information legislation to see whether that landlord had in some way come to the notice of the housing authority and was therefore included in the database.”
“That was an extremely good intervention and a further powerful point that I hope the Minister will take into account. I can imagine the hon. Member for Peterborough seeing constituents turn up at his surgery in 2020. The next Labour Government will be introducing new housing legislation. The hon. Member for South Norfolk will have been drafted in on the housing Bill Committee for the new Opposition and he may be tempted to make a speech about self-build and custom house building. I am always excited to hear him speak, but the hon.”
“If they are concerned that a rogue landlord is operating in my constituency and there might be a way of teasing out confirmation of that fact through an FOI request to the local planning authority, they would be at me straightaway to suggest that I put that FOI request in. I suspect that that would be the case for all Opposition Members and even, I suspect, for one or two Government Members. I therefore say to the Minister: let us try to avoid that situation by accepting the amendment moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead.”
“I am very happy to have been the vehicle for the revelation that the hon. Gentleman has just provided. His intervention reminds me that I have not yet sent to him the membership form for the Co-op party. Perhaps I should also send him a Labour party membership form, although I do not want to fall out of order. We were discussing whether the hon. Member for Peterborough, during one of the speeches by the hon. Member for South Norfolk, might put in a freedom of information request, and I was about to appeal to the Minister to prevent the hon. Member for Peterborough from being tempted to do so. Allow us to see that information as Members of Parliament. Allow us to help our constituents. I think of the caseworkers in my office. They are extremely experienced and effective.”
“As my hon. Friend the Member for Easington said, surely this is, perhaps inadvertently, an opportunity to continue to name and shame rogue landlords who are guilty of poor practice. For prospective tenants who are looking for a new home to move into, looking at a register and being able to judge whether the person who owns the place that they are about to move into is a rogue landlord is a basic defence. The hon. Member for Peterborough, I believe, wanted to hear more about the rogue landlord Andreas Stavrou Antoniades. As I said, he illegally converted a house near Finsbury Park—”
“Last week, according to Reading Borough Council, Ishaq Hussein rented out a house that had no working fire alarm, no firefighting equipment or emergency lighting and inadequate fire escapes, placing tenants at risk of serious injury or death. Why should the information it holds on the database not be available to prospective tenants in Reading so that they can see whether there might be a risk of them moving into a property owned by Mr Ishak Hussein? My hon. Friend has tabled a sensible amendment and I urge the Minister to accept it.”
“Friend’s amendment, whether they are likely to be moving into a property owned by someone judged to be a rogue landlord? My hon. Friend’s amendment is extremely sensible and I urge the Government to accept it. If Government Members have not got the point, perhaps I should mention one more rogue landlord, or perhaps two. Katia Goremsandu was described as the UK’s worst landlord when it emerged in July that she had been convicted seven times for housing offences. Again, why should prospective tenants not have access to the information on the database to see whether they would be at risk of moving into one of her properties?”
“Again, why should his name not be put on the database and, crucially and more importantly in the context of the amendment, why should prospective tenants in Watford not have the opportunity to see this gentleman’s name on the database and decide whether to take the risk of moving in? I am sure the hon. Member for Peterborough will be delighted that I intend to mention Andrew Panayi for a second time. He is a controversial landlord who lets out 180 properties on the Caledonia Road near King’s Cross, which is definitely in the Islington area. He was ordered to pay £70,000 under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. Again, why should prospective tenants not be able to look at the database that is being established under clauses 30 and 31 and see, as a result of my hon.”
“At Great Yarmouth magistrates court, Stanley John Rodgers was convicted of manslaughter and jailed for five years after two of his tenants, both teenagers, died from carbon monoxide poisoning. He was able to continue operating as a landlord, but if the Government accept my hon. Friend’s amendment, prospective tenants will be able to see whether the property they are moving into might be owned by this rogue landlord and make a judgment on whether to move in. Zuo Jun He made more than £26,000 a year by squeezing 12 tenants into a flat above a Chinese restaurant in Watford. He was fined £30,000 plus almost £6,000 in costs after pleading guilty to overcrowding.”