Mr Clive Betts
MP for Sheffield South East · Labour · United Kingdom
“I wholeheartedly welcome the Foreign Secretary’s statement, both its content and its tone. I would like to ask about his discussions with our colleagues and allies in other countries who are looking to implement similar sanctions.”
“I offer two congratulations: first, to my right hon. Friend and constituency neighbour, the First Secretary, on her well-deserved promotion—I am sure she will do an excellent job. Secondly, I congratulate her and the Prime Minister for their real commitment to devolution, which I have wanted to see for an awfully long time.”
“I apologise for the fact that—as I have explained to you, Madam Deputy Speaker—I will have to leave straight after my question to chair Westminster Hall. I thank my right hon. Friend for doing this very challenging piece of work. I think that the theme of fairness, for the people who need benefits and for taxpayers, is right.”
“On the other hand, so many constituents with really serious conditions get turned down for PIP, and can get it only if they struggle through the appeal system, sometimes without any help at all. So the system is not fair to anyone at present.”
“When the previous Government let the contract, we were in a situation in which procurement could not properly take account of the past record of companies, and I understand that the Government have now changed that.”
“I will dive very deeply into the question, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Chair of the Committee sends his apologies for his absence; he is presently in a Committee meeting.”
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“I am sure that reform of the private rented sector is far less challenging than his new job in the House, which is something to do with Brexit. It is my hope that the Committee’s report will be considered carefully by the Government and our recommendations will be implemented in full through the forthcoming renters reform Bill. In the meantime, we await a timely response from the Government—that has not always been the case for most of our recent reports —and I commend the report to the House.”
“Simply put, there has been a decades-long failure by successive Governments to build enough homes. The affordability crisis in housing can only be remedied by a significant increase in house building. The Committee previously recommended that we should be building 90,000 social rented homes every year out of the 300,000 total we all want to be achieved. Although we recognise that that was not the focus of the White Paper, there are still many unanswered questions that we hope the Government will eventually address. I thank everybody who gave evidence to the Committee as part of this inquiry, and I pay particular tribute to Paul Owen, our Committee specialist, for his work on housing matters in recent years.”
“We heard that some smaller landlords believe the proposed reforms will drive them out of the sector. We urge the Government to review the impact of recent tax changes in the buy-to- let market. More broadly, the Government ought to make clear what role they wish the private rented sector to play in the wider housing mix in future, and assess their proposed reforms against that. Although the Committee broadly welcomes the Government’s proposals for reform—I repeat, we welcome what the Minister had to say when she came to the Committee—we have some recommendations for where we believe we can improve the proposals. In the end—we challenged the Minister on this—the White Paper fails to address the most serious challenge currently facing many private renters, which is the high cost of renting caused by the housing crisis.”
“If the Government are serious about raising standards in the private rented sector, they must ensure that local authorities are fully equipped to enforce the new regime. In the absence of extra funding, they must consult with local authorities to ensure that the regime can become self-financing, as well as address the shortage of qualified enforcement staff. Local authorities must be confident that they can collect appropriately large financial penalties imposed on those bad landlords who breach the standards, and get back the costs that they incur in taking court cases, which are often denied by the courts at the time. Our report notes that data points to an apparent decline in the private rented sector, which may be associated with the rise of short and holiday-let markets.”
“We were told that if effort is put into the design to digitise the documents it holds—particularly gas safety certificates, for example—that could be codified and automatically flag any issues, rather than tenants having to search for it. The Committee believes that the cost to landlords of implementing the new decent homes standard is proportionate, given the £10,000 cap on costs that applies to most improvement works. However, the Committee has seen evidence that demonstrates a strong correlation between the energy efficiency of a property and its levels of damp and mould. We therefore recommend that the Government consider new financing solutions where works to improve energy efficiency may exceed that cap.”
“On the White Paper’s proposals on housing conditions, the Committee supports the Government’s plan to introduce a legally binding decent homes standard. This will bring standards for the private rented sector into line with those of social housing. We also welcome the proposed new property portal, which will serve as a central platform and information point with details of landlords and every property they let. That will support local authorities in enforcing the new standards, and will better inform tenants about prospective landlords and properties. However, we have heard concerns about the way the portal is being designed, in that it will only be a document-holding database.”
“While we found that that would go a long way towards ensuring security of tenure for most tenants, the Committee recommends one exception, which is that this should not apply to the general student private rented sector. Students will be all too familiar with the annual dash for accommodation, with many university towns and cities now seeing queues around blocks to view properties that are reserved within hours of being listed. Abolishing 12-month fixed tenancies for that group could make letting to students much less attractive for private landlords and exacerbate the problem. Most students expect their tenancy to mirror the academic year, so we recommend that fixed-term contracts be retained for that group.”
“The Government rejected that recommendation at the time, saying that there are more effective ways to increase the efficiency and timeliness of the court process. We are calling again for a specialist housing court to be introduced, as we have no confidence that court reforms will happen quickly enough. Either way, the Government must ensure that courts can process claims quickly, efficiently and fairly for all parties. That should include fast-tracking possession claims in respect of non-payment of rent, antisocial behaviour and serious cases of disrepair. Both landlords and tenants need that process to work effectively. Our inquiry also considered the White Paper’s proposal that fixed-term tenancies be abolished.”
“The Committee has identified that these new grounds could be exploited by bad landlords as a backdoor to “no fault” evictions. To avoid that, we recommend that landlords should not be allowed to sell or occupy their property during the first 12 months of a tenancy agreement, and that a property should not be marketed or re-let within six months of either ground being used. Another challenge that risks undermining the Government’s progress on tenancy reform is in respect of court hearings required under the section 8 process. As it stands, courts are already struggling to process housing cases quickly enough, and an increase in the number of section 8 possession hearings risks overwhelming the system. In our report we recommend that a specialist housing court be introduced. That repeats our predecessor Committee’s recommendation from 2018.”
“In that context, the proposal to repeal section 21 of the Housing Act 1988, which allows for “no fault” evictions, is a welcome step in giving tenants the confidence to complain to landlords without fear of eviction. While the Committee recognises that the majority of private landlords have no desire or incentive to evict tenants without good reason, we concluded that the repeal of section 21 is necessary to stop unfair evictions and give tenants the security they deserve. Once section 21 is repealed, landlords will be reliant on section 8 of the Housing Act to evict tenants, particularly in cases concerning rent arrears and antisocial behaviour. The Government intend to give landlords new grounds for possession when they wish to sell, or move themselves or close family members into their property.”
“In the course of our inquiry we spoke to organisations representing tenants and landlords. We found that too often tenants are afraid to complain when things go wrong, due to the threat that they may be evicted without fault. We also heard how private rented accommodation is more likely to be of poor quality than homes in other tenures. Some 21% of private rented homes are classed as non-decent, and category 1 hazards, such as serious damp and mould, are present in 12% of rental properties. However, the majority of private tenants are satisfied with their homes, and the majority of landlords manage their properties well. But any system of regulation has to deal effectively with those who do not—the rogues and, in extremis, the downright criminal.”
“The Committee launched its inquiry following the publication of the Government’s White Paper, “A Fairer Private Rented Sector”, which sets out the Government’s long-term vision for the sector, particularly on matters of security of tenure and housing quality. We have been told that the Government plan to implement the proposals in the White Paper this Session through a renters’ reform Bill, and we look forward to that. We hope that the Government will examine our findings closely when finalising the Bill. Some 4.6 million tenants in England are in the private rented sector today, representing 19% of households. Twenty years ago those tenants would typically have been students or young professionals saving for their first home. Today’s tenants are on average older, perhaps living with children, and more likely to be on low incomes.”
“I am tempted to note that perhaps if Members direct their questions to me, they might get slightly better answers than from the Minister—that is probably very unfair at the beginning of the statement, because the Minister came and helpfully gave evidence to the Committee and I want to put that on record right at the beginning. The Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee has published its report on reforming the private rented sector. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for providing time for a statement on that report. I also thank the staff of the Committee and its specialist advisers for their support and assistance with producing the report. I thank the other members of the Committee who, once again, agreed our report unanimously.”
“I thank the hon. Member for his question, which is one that he must address to the Minister. Certainly, we had evidence that the reforms particularly hit smaller landlords who personally own their properties, rather than the larger landlords who own their properties through a company and can continue to offset their interest payments against their rental income.”
“In the previous report, we did not look specifically at mechanisms for increasing housing supply. In this report, we recommended that 90,000 social homes are built a year and said that that could cost up to £10 billion a year, which is about £70 billion more than has been provided through social housing grant. The Government must give that serious consideration, because the housing crisis will not go away unless something significant is done. The worry is, and this is something the Committee is looking at, that housing associations and councils will start to build fewer homes because of the pressures from disrepair, particularly around mould and damp, and because they are fixing safety defects post-Grenfell, all of which are adding further demands on their limited capital resources.”
“This is probably not the first occasion that I agree with the hon. Member. The portal is an extremely important step forward, and it will bring that information together. We talked about the importance of how it is delivered, which will involve a lot of discussions with landlords and councils to get it right, digitalising some of the information so that it is accurate and proper. It also ought to help with the problems that many councils have in finding out who owns a property, as bad landlords often move it from one family member to another and the council has the challenge of chasing it round. I hope the information held in the portal will enable councils to enforce more appropriately in future.”
“Yes, because it is a recommendation in our report. Wherever the reply to our report comes from—I presume it will come from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, but no doubt it will come after consultation with other Ministers—the situation is one that the Committee will follow through. In the end, if there are so many properties in an area that are offered for a rent that someone who is working on a relatively low income cannot afford, and the housing allowance does not cover it, that is a problem that we simply must address. We cannot go on ignoring it, and that is what the Committee says. We ought to get back to the previous 30% decile position, and look at whether even that is satisfactory in some areas to make housing genuinely affordable.”
“That would be a good idea because, in the end, how the court process and the ways of resolving disputes will work are key to the reforms. We ought to be able to talk through that before we get to a final conclusion. Something like the small claims court, with mediation embedded, might be the best way to resolve most of these disputes quickly, but there is nothing there at present that can do that.”
“It is not my job to select Housing Ministers, unfortunately. Maybe one reform we could introduce in future is Select Committees choosing Ministers, but we are not there yet. In any organisation, if someone is there for only a few weeks or months, it is harder for them to do the job. I am pleased that the existing Housing Minister has been there longer than a few weeks now. Hopefully that brings some stability and we can get the Bill through shortly to implement the reforms.”
“We did not specifically look at that, but my hon. Friend makes a very good point. We made the following recommendation: the Government propose one housing ombudsman for landlords, and a separate housing ombudsman, or system of mediation, for agents, but why cannot we bring those together, and have just one private rented sector ombudsman, covering landlords and agents?”
“Otherwise, we may find that the tribunal system, like the court system, gets completely overloaded. That would be another unintended consequence, which we want to avoid.”
“The issue of rent in the private rented sector is clearly important. We did not propose any change relating to the first time a tenancy is let, but we recognise that there must be some mechanism for agreeing rent increases once the tenancy is let. Otherwise, landlords could simply jack up the rent to an extortionate amount to get a tenant out. The Government propose letting landlords suggest increases, and tenants going to tribunal if they do not agree with them. We do not know why the Government resisted the proposal that there be built-in clauses in tenancy agreements—many agreements have such a clause—that say that rents can go up by a certain amount each year. The agreements could also include a break clause, so that there could be a reassessment every few years.”
“I thank the Minister for his apology. My right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) asked a pertinent question about the story in the FT yesterday, and he did not really get a full answer, did he? It did not say that the Department had been stopped from spending capital money; it said that the Department had been “banned from making spending decisions on new capital projects without specific permission from the Treasury, after concerns were raised about the ministry’s ability to deliver value for money.” That is a pretty damning intervention by the Treasury. Is it true?”
“I am just reading the figures and I think the right hon. Gentleman is wrong. About 60% of local government funding as a whole comes from council tax, so it is raised locally.”
“So much of this funding package is short-term solutions, because there have been long-term issues.”
“We know there are other major challenges. On social care funding, the extra money is welcome, although some of it is coming from council tax. I accept the point that the social care grant has been adapted to try to reflect the fact that authorities with the greatest ability to raise money through council tax have had less money than those who cannot. I accept that there has been an attempt to equalise that, but nevertheless the Health Committee, when the Chancellor was its Chair, along with the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee, produced figures from the Local Government Association and others showing a gap of around £13 billion. A bit of extra money now, taken from the money that should have gone into the Dilnot reforms, is not a long-term solution.”
“The rest of the services, aside from social care, have smaller resources from a smaller pot. That is simply the situation they are left with. They are the services, of course, that the vast majority of our constituents rely on. Most people do not get social care. They think it is right that people who need it should get it, but they themselves do not get it. What they see is a large increase in council tax once again and they are getting less service for more money. That is a real worry—I have made this point before—for the future of our local democracy. If people feel they are getting a bad deal—that they are paying more and getting less—at some point there will be a reaction from local communities. That reaction will probably be against their local councils, as opposed to the national system which puts councils in that particular place.”
“The other change is that social care funding now takes up about 60% to 70% of local government funding. Local authorities have prioritised it and they are right to do so. But even that means that many people who would have had social care in 2010 do not now get it because the criteria have been tightened. Look at the rest of the services: the cuts to buses, libraries, parks, street cleaning and environmental services have in many cases been up to 50%. We can see that. We can see the libraries have been shut. We know we are going to get a massive round of bus cuts again in South Yorkshire come April. The grant is not there from the Department for Transport, as far as we know, and there is no possibility that councils can replace it from their own resources.”
“The energy costs are enormous and it will be a major challenge to the health of our citizens if we do not sort out that particular problem. Most authorities do not have the reserves they had three or four years ago. If they do get into difficulties, there is nowhere to go. That is simply the situation. Authorities that have been prudent and spent their reserves over the years are now in a very different position. That is against the background—I do not think this can be challenged—of local government having the worst cuts of any part of the public sector since 2010. Local authorities in the poorest areas have had bigger cuts than those in richer areas. The Government will say that they had more grant to cut. Well, that is true, but they had more grant because they actually needed it. They had greater needs and fewer resources to draw on.”
“Mr Deputy Speaker, if I struggle to speak during this debate it is not because I am speechless at the generosity of the Minister’s settlement this year; I just happen to have quite a bad cold. Anyway, on to the facts at hand. First, I accept the point that this is a better settlement than in previous years. It probably could not be as bad, with the circumstances local authorities were in. It probably means that the level of cuts we experienced in previous years will not be repeated in all authorities, but that the cuts that have been made will not be restored. There are particular issues with swimming pools and leisure centres that, as we see it at present, the Government are just not going to address.”
“That cannot be right, it cannot be fair and it cannot be reasonable. I recognise the challenge for any future Government once we get into fair funding reviews: one person’s fair funding is another person’s unfair funding, because the same amount of money is being moved between areas. It works best when funding is going up, because even areas that lose in relative terms do not face an absolute loss. There are big challenges there. Those are the issues that are being ducked: council tax reform, business rates reform, fair funding and the long-term funding of social care.”
“I suspect that councils that have done quite well with development over the past few years have probably raised their tax base anyway and are now doing quite well out of the fact that the reset has not happened. It would be interesting to see some figures on that. I turn to the fair funding settlement. I think it was the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) who announced the fair funding review, the first time he was Secretary of State. We are still waiting. I know that there have been problems, including covid, but work could nevertheless have gone on. That ties into the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Andrew Western) made about having just a one-year funding settlement with no long-term plan. The current grant arrangements are based on data that in some cases is nearly 20 years old.”
“It is based on 1991 valuations, and the amount that people actually pay rises nowhere nearly as quickly as the value of their house. It is a regressive tax and it enables richer areas to raise an awful lot of money for every percentage increase. Those are challenges that any future Government will have to deal with—I put a marker down for my Labour Front-Bench colleagues, too. Business rates are not fair. We have had a Government review, but everyone knows that they are simply not fair at all for high streets versus digital companies. The business rates reset has been put to one side. Has there been any impact assessment on which councils are benefiting from that and which are not?”
“That is not my view, but that of the Local Government Association: its Conservative chair and the leader of its Labour group have both said that we cannot sort out local government finance until we get a solution to social care funding. Council tax is taking more of the strain—it now represents up to 60% of local government funding. It is not a great tax, is it? The Secretary of the State has one great redeeming feature: when he comes before the Select Committee, he is actually quite honest in his answers, at least most of the time. [ Laughter. ] He accepts that there are challenges and problems. He was very honest when we asked him whether he thought council tax is regressive: he said yes, and passed the parcel to the Minister to do a review of council tax. We look forward to seeing that review, because council tax is a major challenge.”
“My hon. Friend makes a very good point. Many of us can slip into speaking just about adult social care. We recognise the challenges of an elderly population. People growing older is a good thing—some of us may have a personal interest in that—and people with learning disabilities are living longer, but the biggest percentage increases in demand for care over the past few years have been in children’s social care. That important point is often overlooked, so my hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise it. On big issues such as social care, we need a discrete source of funding. We cannot carry on muddling away at trying to fund social care from the current package of funds available to local councils.”
“The right hon. Member is absolutely right; it is about being able to plan ahead. Councils need certainty about what is coming to them. That point ties into a related issue: the housing revenue account, which is not often talked about. We heard in the Select Committee the other day about the enormous challenges that will result from the surveys that the Secretary of State has rightly asked councils to carry out, as has the Regulator of Social Housing. We will see some very big numbers come out of those for some of our worst social housing to be put right. It is not just about a bit of plastering here and a few repairs there; it is about regeneration and, in some cases, complete demolition and rebuilding.”
“The settlement is better than it might have been, but it does not actually improve the present situation following several years of biting cuts in important services—and, by the way, perhaps when the Minister winds up the debate he will tell us what has happened to the public health grant, because that is very important as well.”
“My hon. Friend is right. Apart from a housing revenue account with limited headroom, councils are facing pressures to build new homes and pressures to make existing homes more energy-efficient, to make them safe and secure and, in particular, free of mould and damp, and also to make them safe and secure in relation to the challenges post-Grenfell. They cannot do all that with the money they have, and the same is true of housing associations, which are in exactly the same position. We need a real, proper debate on those matters.”
“Essentially, they were put there to treat every football fan as a hooligan, without any thought for spectator safety, and we ought to learn some lessons from that as well. When the Government eventually produce their report, rather than merely giving us warm words and commitments, will they say how they will ensure that every single police force in the country abides by the recommendations in the report and implements them in full?”
“As someone who was present at Hillsborough on that terrible day and who was the leader of the council, I echo comments made by Conservative Members—first, about the incredibly generosity and warmth of Sheffield residents around the ground, who welcomed very distraught people into their homes and gave them whatever help they could. Secondly, the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) is right; the South Yorkshire police are accountable for what they have done. They probably have not been accountable enough, given their enormous failings. But there was also a failing to recognise that circumstances had changed, with cages being put around grounds. As Lord Justice Taylor recommended in his report, those cages had to be taken down because they were making so many grounds in this country unsafe.”
“On 9 January, the permanent secretary and his officials came to the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee, and Emran Mian, the director for regeneration, said that that uplift had been plucked out of thin air and that it did not have to be followed if it meant building on the green belt, but if it meant building more homes on green spaces, the uplift would have to be implemented. So, if in implementing that uplift—the 35%—authorities find that they cannot deliver the Government’s target of everyone being within 15 minutes of green space, do they follow the uplift or follow the aspiration on green space?”
“I want to declare an interest: I am a trustee of the small charity, Fields in Trust, that works with some local authorities in trying to achieve the target of no household being more than 15 minutes away from green space. The Secretary of State said that this was about the whole of Government. Before Christmas, the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities introduced a consultation on changes to the national planning policy framework, which required the 20 major urban areas in this country to have a 35% uplift to their house building targets.”
“I welcome the progress made so far. In a couple of weeks’ time, the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee will be looking further at the omissions that probably still exist in the system, including how the Secretary of State will actually get the money out of the product providers, on which he has not given details. Today’s big omission is social housing. Help for leaseholders is very welcome, but social housing providers, housing associations and councils are challenged with disrepair problems and the need to make their homes more energy-efficient, on top of which they now have the building safety work. Apart from on ACM cladding, there is no help at all for social housing providers. Why can the Secretary of State not remedy this unfairness?”
“I do not know whether the Minister has been on a long journey in an electric car, but you can often travel for dozens of miles—perhaps more than 100—without finding a rapid charger. When you do get to one, you discover that “rapid charger” is a misnomer, because National Grid cannot deliver the necessary power. Even if you get to one that is working, it is often full because of the number of electric cars now on the road, so you end up waiting in a queue for half an hour or more. When will the Government develop a proper national network so that what should be a pleasant day out for motorists does not mean hours of planning in advance and then hours of frustration and delay on the journey?”
“Just say it—she wants a photo bid. Come up to Sheffield in South Yorkshire and stand at a bus stop. She will have a long time to wait before one comes along, because once again we have been unsuccessful with the bid we put in.”
“Thank you, Mr Speaker. Why do we not stop the pretence that this has anything whatever to do with levelling up? Councils have to spend a lot of time bidding for one of about 300 pots of money. There is no real strategy at all and no joining up between the different bids. They look more like photo opportunities so that Ministers can go around the country announcing the successful results. Why will the Minister not listen to the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee? We called for the bid process to be dropped for the most part and for Government Departments to instead consider how they can reposition the totality of their spending on a strategic basis to help the poorest parts of the country. The Secretary of State agreed that that is what should be done, but the permanent secretary said no progress has been made.”
“May I ask the Secretary of State about two groups who have not had much support so far? One group is households on a communal heating scheme who get their heating bills from their landlord. The Government have announced measures to rectify that situation, but could registered housing providers such as housing associations and local authorities be allowed to apply jointly for their tenants, to ease them into the scheme? Secondly, people on housing benefit do not get the additional help for being on a low income that those on universal credit receive, because housing benefit is not a Department for Work and Pensions benefit. Why is there discrimination against housing benefit recipients? It really is unfair, is it not?”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I will not refer to your abject failure at the weekend to defeat Sheffield United in the cup. That would be very unfair of me.”
“What was in some ways even worse is that the taxpayer was paying millions of pounds for this service, although the Department for Work and Pensions could not actually tell us how much. In the end, though, the Committee is not asking for more money. We are saying that the money that is there could be spent an awful lot better. Delivering to very vulnerable people a better service than they are currently getting and improving the lives of people in communities that have been blighted by this are the objectives we have in mind for the legislation. We do not want to drive out good providers or close down good accommodation. We want to get at the rogue providers who operate scams to make millions of pounds out of housing benefit at the expense of vulnerable people who are not getting the service they deserve.”
“I echo the comments of the hon. Member for Harrow East, my honourable Select Committee friend. We worked together closely on the Bill, as did the whole Select Committee; our report on the issue was unanimous. We described what we saw, which—notwithstanding the excellent provision that does exist in the sector—is a system and a delivery of service that is in many respects a complete mess. We saw appalling examples of accommodation that was not fit for purpose, and that the supposed support in this supported accommodation did not exist, consisting as it did of a “support worker” opening a door and shouting up the stairs, “Are you alright, then?” It was absolutely dreadful.”