Gideon Amos

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1,432 held · 750 searchable for Gideon Amos. The searchable lines are below in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 2 of 10.

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1. “New Clause 18 Duty to report: social housing levy scheme “(1) The Secretary of State must, within twelve months of the passing of this Act, publish and lay before Parliament a report on the merits of establishing a local levy on holiday accommodation for the purposes of generating revenue to fund local social housing projects (the ‘social housing levy scheme’).”

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2. “There is no automatic reason why the new clause would lead to a reduction in social rent. Covenanted housing of that kind could be an option within the existing quantity of shared ownership or other tenures and be offered to people as a route to home ownership and an equity stake in their home. The Liberal Democrats continue to believe that this is a valuable tenure and should be expanded. But I can do the maths, so I will not push this to a vote. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion. Clause, by leave, withdrawn.”

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3. “In yesterday’s Budget, the Chancellor extended small business rate relief; that is recognised. Whether or not that will affect those premises is yet to be seen. A huge number of second home owners have flipped their second homes from council tax to business rates to take advantage of the small business rate relief. That is not the intention of the system. We need to find ways, particularly in areas such as Cornwall and elsewhere, to properly control the level of second home ownership and prevent those second homes from being subsidised by the hard-pressed taxpayer. On that basis, I commend the new clause, which would levy those second home businesses, to the Committee.”

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4. “I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time. Even though I can do the maths, we Liberal Democrats believe that new clause 18 is particularly important. It would require the Government to report on a social housing levy scheme that would spend additional income from local holiday lets, either via levy or disapplying small business rate relief, on local social housing projects and related purposes. The new clause stands in the name of my colleague and hon. Friend the Member for St Ives, who has worked extensively in the affordable housing sector and knows about that of which he speaks. He points out that in Cornwall alone, holiday let companies—holiday home owners—have been granted over £500 million in small business tax relief and covid aid during the last decade. That is a transfer of subsidy that the sector can ill afford.”

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5. “This will be the last Liberal Democrat new clause for a while. I recognise that the Government are addressing second home ownership in various ways, but the question that remains unanswered is whether it is legitimate or acceptable for second home owners to flip their homes into small businesses to take advantage of business rates relief and avoid the council tax implications of a second home. That is costing taxpayers—hard-working people, as is often said—huge amounts of money. Some claimants are now backdating their tax relief claims back to 1993. For those reasons, I will press new clause 18 to a vote. Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.”

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6. “I agree with the comments that we have just heard. This is the most iniquitous and divisive amendment to the Bill, as I said on Second Reading. I will tell the Committee who it excludes: the nurses in my local hospital, Musgrove Park, who are looking after very sick people. They have been invited here by us—by our society—to come and work as nurses in the NHS, but under a Conservative Government they would be turned out of their council houses. I will tell the Committee who else the new clause excludes.”

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7. “Again, they come here at our invitation and would be told they are not allowed to have social housing. The people who come and support our high streets and our local businesses who do not yet have leave to remain would not be allowed access to social housing. As we discussed on Second Reading, the new clause would extend not only to the hon. Member for Ealing Southall, but to the first Duke of Wellington, if he were alive today. They would be refused a council home under the Conservative new clause, were they to apply.”

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8. “It is gracious of the Opposition spokesperson to consent to those nurses staying in their homes, but apparently when we invite nurses in future to come to Taunton and Wellington and elsewhere in the country, we will tell them, “You must work for the NHS and you must pay your taxes, but if you need affordable housing, you cannot have it. Tough. Go and find somewhere else.” I have had nurses in my surgery desperately looking for social housing and affordable housing, having come here and moved their family and children here at the invitation of the previous Conservative Government. They were invited here, but they cannot find anywhere to live. They would not be welcome to have social housing under the Conservative new clause. I can tell the Committee who else would not be welcome: the care workers looking after our loved ones in care homes.”

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9. “Let us move away from the history. The main point is that the lack of social housing is not the fault of migrants; it is the fault of successive Governments for not building enough and flogging off far too many council homes. That is why we do not have enough social housing. This is a divisive new clause. I was hoping for better from the Conservative party—they are chasing the Reform mantra. They should leave it to the Reform party to indulge in this kind of politics. It is beneath them. The Committee should reject this new clause, and we will vote against it.”

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10. “Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip was absolutely right when he identified that this new clause relates to where someone was born, because the biggest single factor in whether someone is a British citizen is their birthplace. The vast majority of people who achieve British citizenship do so because they were born here. The Duke of Wellington was not the only Prime Minister not born here; Boris Johnson was born in the United States. It is hard to imagine him falling on hard times, but if he did, I do not know if he would be allowed social housing. There are other national treasures, such as Spike Milligan, who were not born here. The main thing I remember about him is that he had “I told you I was ill” on his tombstone. He was born in India—he was not a British citizen, and objected to that fact for a number of years.”

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11. “I think the history books will show that the Duke of Wellington was born 32 years before the Act of Union between Britain and Ireland, and Britain and Ireland are—I know this will come as a shock to the Opposition—two different places. He was an Irish citizen, not a British citizen. Since the ninth duke is no longer in Parliament as a result of sensible reforms to the House of Lords, I feel as the Member of Parliament for Wellington that I have a duty to stand up for his line of heritage. When I see the ninth duke, I will explain to him that his ancestor would no longer be welcome under the Conservatives’ new clause. The hon.”

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12. “It is surely not beyond the wit of Government to produce a database where someone can make multiple uploads and does not need to upload one at a time, and a database that is more efficient than the one we have at the moment where someone cannot even copy data across from one property to the next—even if they have 250 properties that are exactly the same, they have to enter each one individually without copying across any of the data. If the official Opposition press the measure to a Division, which they clearly will, we Liberal Democrats will also vote against it. It is bad for the Renters’ Rights Act, bad for tenants, bad for landlords and bad for the build-to-rent sector that we need to support our housing market.”

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13. “It continues: “Without any fee discount or integrative information provision process, a BTR landlord with a 5,000-unit portfolio can expect to spend c.£378,000 a year on registering their properties.” Furthermore, it says: “To comply both with selective licensing and the Service, a BTR landlord can expect to pay over £4,000,000 across a 5,000-home portfolio.” As the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Orpington, pointed out, the costs are above what was expected at the time of Act’s passage.”

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14. “I do not intend to get into that debate in detail—the Joseph Rowntree Foundation takes a different view and says that there is a certain amount of churn—but one thing is absolutely clear: the Act is challenging the sector to a huge degree and causing a great deal of change and churn. The last thing that it needs right now is a database that, for our biggest landlords, is completely impossible to complete in any economic or efficient way. I am grateful to Real Estate:UK for its briefing, and I make no apologies for reading out parts of what it has told me. For example, it says that “a single employee working through a 5,000-home portfolio would need 2,500 hours or around 312.5 working days” to upload. That has to be done every year.”

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15. “As well as being harmful—or challenging, to say the very least—to landlords and damaging to their business operations, it will frustrate tenants if landlords need to spend that amount of time updating the register one property at a time. Let us imagine that someone is an institutional landlord with 4,000 dwellings. If only one can be entered at a time, it will take weeks and months, by which time the database will be completely out of date for tenants looking at it. The problems of the database will affect not only landlords, but tenants. We desperately need more build-to-rent landlords to build more rented accommodation. There is a debate going on about the Renters’ Rights Act and whether landlords have withdrawn from the market.”

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16. “It is a pleasure to serve the Committee with you in the Chair, Mr Wishart. I declare an interest as a registered social landlord. The Liberal Democrats come at this from a somewhat different starting point than the official Opposition, in that we supported the Renters’ Rights Act and we strongly supported the introduction of a database of landlords as a source of really important basic information that tenants should be able to have. We have been consistent in supporting the concept of what is in front of us. The system that has been devised, however, is nothing short of a fiasco and will undermine the whole purpose of the database.”

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17. “As always, the Minister is being very generous with his time. He has answered a number of the points raised—I will give him that—but if institutional landlords are paying millions of pounds in fees, the least they should expect is to have a database that works. I welcome the Minister saying that he is continuing to look at the issue, but could he go a smidgen further and commit, on the record, that the Government will ensure that bulk uploads can be achieved? That is the huge failure of the system.”

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18. “We stand squarely in support of the clause, although we would go further and give local authorities the ability and power to suspend right to buy completely if that is right for their area so that they can rebuild their stock of council housing and social rent homes.”

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19. “It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Vickers. I rise to support the clause. For Liberal Democrats, this is the most important and significant clause in the Bill, as it constrains the selling off of council houses. It is concerning that the Conservatives have tabled an amendment that would essentially reverse it. With 1.32 million people on the housing waiting list and 177,000 children in temporary accommodation, the last thing that we need is to continue the gradual loss of social housing. There has been a net loss of 2 million social homes since the introduction of right to buy. If that does not show that we cannot fill the bath with the plug taken out, nothing does.”

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20. “I rise to speak to our Liberal Democrat amendments. New clause 2 would provide local authorities with the power to suspend right to buy in an area completely and bring it to an end. Perhaps for the first and last time, I agree 100% with the hon. Member for Orpington, completely and wholeheartedly; he said that local areas are best placed to decide what is right for them on council housing provision and council housing stock. That is why we would give local authorities the ability to say that they have lost enough council housing. Some 2 million council homes were lost to right to buy and 4 million social homes have been lost altogether. Enough is enough. Local communities should have the right to decide whether they want to continue to see the loss of council homes in their area.”

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21. “If we have a system where 4 million homes have been lost and 1.3 million people are on the council waiting list, something has gone radically wrong. We need a different approach.”

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22. “From a sedentary position, the hon. Gentleman is asking me to give way, but I have not yet answered his initial question. Yes, we need to find ways to help people into home ownership. That is vital and fundamental to a thriving society. We need to build more homes. We need to provide more and better shared ownership arrangements, as the current arrangements are not working. We need to help people on to the housing ladder. That does not mean we need to erode and diminish our social housing stock.”

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23. “The hon. Member is quite right. Not only that, but local authorities end up paying over the odds for placing families in temporary accommodation, sometimes in homes that were built as council houses to provide for those families in the first place. Now they are being sublet, sometimes multiple times, to provide that housing.”

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24. “We need to give local authorities the power and flexibility to decide for themselves whether it is right to continue with right to buy in their areas. If we believe in local communities and local democracy, we should give them the ability to say that right to buy and the loss of more council housing stock is no longer right for their area. I commend new clause 2 to the Committee and urge all Committee members to vote for it.”

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25. “I am somewhat surprised that the Opposition spokesperson has entered into the realm of social housing supply, given the record of the previous Conservative Government. Of course, we need to increase supply as well as saving the stock that has been built with public funds—taxpayer’s money—for the community, rather than giving over discounts, sometimes to the extent of a £70,000 or £80,000 transfer of cash, from the taxpayer into the hands of individual property owners for no good reason. We need to increase supply. That is why the Liberal Democrats have a target to build 150,000 social rent homes per year. I do not know the hon. Gentleman’s party’s target for the delivery of social housing—they did not build many when they were in government.”

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26. “Although I will not push amendment 8 to a vote, it would be helpful if the Minister considered whether an extension could be provided where negotiations are ongoing, so that there is a real chance for the purchase of that property to be completed and for the local authority to succeed in that endeavour.”

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27. “Amendment 1 would require the Regulator of Social Housing to receive a copy of the notice. Amendment 8 is effectively a stop-the-clock amendment, whereby, if negotiations are ongoing for the acquisition of a social home by a local authority, the time period would be extended by a further four weeks. I recognise that the amendment refers to the four-week period in the Bill, which may be extended to eight weeks through other amendments. However, the principle of allowing an extension of time when negotiations are ongoing is significant, and something that the Local Government Association would support.”

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28. “I will speak to amendments 5, 6, 1 and 8. Amendment 5 would extend the notification of proposed sale to cover the Regulator of Social Housing. Amendment 6 would extend the timescales of notice from four to eight weeks. I note that, since we tabled the amendment, the Government have come up with their own amendment to extend the timescales; they have obviously been reading everything we table closely. I am glad that we are already having an impact on the Bill and I will be happy to press the amendment to a vote if necessary, to ensure that the Government succeed in getting the change in timescale that they clearly want. Otherwise, depending on the order of voting—I still sometimes have a problem following that—I am sure that one or the other will fulfil the same purpose.”

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29. “If we are after transparency, I have difficulty with the Minister’s basing his argument on the massive cost of putting something on a website. I understand that it is a tradition of this place that the Government resist all amendments that come from all quarters other than their own, but this seems to be taking things to an illogical conclusion.”

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30. “(5) Any dispute as to the existing use value for social housing shall be determined by an independent valuer appointed by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. (6) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision about the operation of this section.” This amendment gives local housing authorities a right of first refusal to acquire social rent dwellings and dwellings previously transferred from local authorities at existing use value for social housing.”

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31. “I beg to move amendment 2, in clause 12, page 12, line 5, at end insert— “171AA Right of first refusal: local housing authorities (1) This section applies where— (a) a sale notice has been given under section 171A in relation to a dwelling, and (b) the dwelling— (i) is let at social rent, or (ii) was previously transferred from a local housing authority. (2) During the period specified in section 171A(3), the local housing authority for the area in which the dwelling is situated may make an offer to acquire the dwelling. (3) Where an offer is made under subsection (2), the private registered provider must dispose of the dwelling to the local housing authority at existing use value for social housing. (4) A dwelling acquired under this section must be retained as social housing within the meaning of Part 2 of this Act.”

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32. “I will be brief. Amendment 2 would give local housing authorities right of first refusal to acquire social rent dwellings and dwellings previously transferred from local authorities at existing use value for social housing. The acquisition of those properties at existing use value for social housing, rather than at market value or existing use value, is significant, because obviously the existing use value for social housing is lower. It is important that local authorities have the ability to acquire homes that are being disposed of, so that the net reduction in social housing is not increased. I commend the amendment to the Committee.”

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33. “I appreciate the Minister’s response. The amendments are genuinely intended to provide councils with the ability to acquire stock rather than see it lost from the social housing sector. This is a particularly important area and, I believe, an important amendment. I understand the risks of reclassification on to the public sector balance sheet. I wonder whether the Minister would be willing to publish the advice he has received on that, because the sector will want to understand why first refusal cannot be given to local authorities.”

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34. “While I am sure that most assessors are reliable professionals, given that the Grenfell inquiry report chaired by judge Sir Martin Moore-Bick cited “commercial interests” in this area of work as one of the contributory factors to the fire, is retaining commercial interests in the system of fire risk assessment, assessors and building inspectors a risk worth taking?”

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35. “First and foremost, it enshrines into law the discredited publicly available specification 9980—PAS 9980—approach. As shown in clause 44, that will allow cladding of “tolerable” risk of combustion to remain on homes after they have been remediated. One may expect “tolerable” risk to be no more than the level of risk allowed in new buildings under the building regulations, as tightened up after Grenfell, but as the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier) has already alluded to, it is not that standard. In this Bill, remediation will be only to a standard that a fire risk assessor decides is “tolerable”. We are talking about fire risk assessors paid by building owners, who are more likely than not to have commercial interests in doing as few works as possible to their building.”

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36. “For those reasons, we have not gone as far as tabling a fatal amendment, despite the very serious flaws, as we see them. It would be wrong to deny support to any leaseholders or residents who without this Bill would get less help, but I call on the Government to consider seriously the degree to which the Bill is lacking. While I do not doubt the sincerity of the Secretary of State or the Bill, the Government need to think harder and bring forward amendments that are urgently needed to strengthen the Bill. In the stages that follow Second Reading, we will be suggesting and proposing changes, and working with the Government as constructively as we can to get the improvements that we believe are necessary. Where does the Bill fall short?”

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37. “We will look at the amendments that have just been outlined, and we look forward studying them when they come forward. Sadly, as the Bill stands it does none of those things and, because of that, it is substandard and needs radical improvement. On the plus side, let me be clear about the positive aspects of the Bill that we support. We support the legal duty for responsible entities to remediate, including the important extension of the duty in relation to buildings of 11 to 18 metres in height. We support the stronger intervention powers for housing authorities and the regulator against the blockers, such as through remediation management orders. We support making it easier to bring claims against cladding manufacturers, and we support requirements to have fire risk assessments of external walls and associated registers.”

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38. “As we remember the 72 victims of Grenfell and the many who are still waiting for justice, I know the Secretary of State and Members from across the whole House share the same commitment to do right by them, to ensure such a calamity never happens again, and to do better for all the leaseholders and residents living with unsafe cladding through no fault of their own. We need a Bill that will, once and for all, make people’s homes not just safer but as safe as their residents have a right to expect them to be. The Liberal Democrats remain committed to getting the removal of unsafe cladding urgently and by a statutory deadline, to getting remediation to the right safety standard—the one that building regulations were uprated to post-Grenfell—and to residents not having to pay a penny towards fixing a crisis not of their own making.”

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39. “The hon. Member is very kind—I am sure my experience is as great as many other Members of the House. I am coming to what we believe would be a preferable standard. Our approach is that these issues of “commercial interests” should be expunged from the Bill, and that the tolerability approach should be removed. We believe that existing homes and buildings should be remediated to meet the standard of fire safety required in the building regulations that were uprated in 2018, after Grenfell.”

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40. “We have increases in insurance costs of 56% and higher. For that reason, many owners cannot sell or get a new mortgage, so they sink into negative equity and become mortgage prisoners in their own home.”

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41. “I certainly support my hon. Friend’s plea. I will come to the issue of the independence of building inspectors, which is very important. Let me return to standards. The building regulations are the standard that the Government have set; they are needed for newly built homes to be safe, so the same standard therefore has to apply to the homes that people already live in. I have visited high-rise apartments in London and elsewhere, and seen them covered in scaffolding and being remediated under the developer scheme, but many of them are being left with so much cladding breaching building regulations and fire safety standards that residents cannot get insurance. It is the insurance that really gives the game away. If the building really was safe, why would the insurance premiums be so high?”

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42. “We must make homes fully safe under building regulations revised for that purpose; make oversight and inspection independent, not profit-dependent; hold developers and manufacturers to account by pursuing them for the costs; protect leaseholders, including those in buildings under 11 metres; and put residents at the heart of remediation, so that they can see the assessments of their homes and have a real, statutory deadline. That is the Bill that the House needed to see today, and it is the Bill we will work hard to shape through its remaining stages.”

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43. “Finally, there is no deadline in the Bill by which all the defects revealed by Grenfell across the tall buildings estate will be put right. The fire safety of all homes needs to meet the standard that we require for new homes. Existing residents are no less worthy of that than the residents of future homes, who will benefit from the building regulations standard. The commercial interests that ran rife in building safety inspections in the lead-up to Grenfell need to be rooted out once and for all, and residents and leaseholders must not be expected to pay a penny towards repairing a crisis they are completely innocent of causing.”

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44. “Leaseholders in Taunton and Wellington and across the country are already paying ground rents that are too high to absentee landlords for nothing in return, as abolishing residential leasehold seems to recede further and further into the future. The Bill fails to give residents the right to see their building’s fire risk assessment and to give local authorities the resources to deliver the new enforcement duties. It also fails to commit the Government to making manufacturers—those that make unsafe products that cause fire—pay. That leaves the onus on others to pursue them through slow and costly court action. It is our position that, in those ways, the Bill fails to fully implement the Grenfell Tower inquiry recommendations.”

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45. “The profit motive needs to be expunged from building inspector services generally, and the Bill fails to do that. We need to remove commercial interests from building inspectors and fire risk assessors by placing them all under a publicly controlled, non-profit making authority. There is still no statutory certification requirement for a competent person to become a fire risk assessor. When will those measures be brought forward, as has been promised in previous legislation? The second big omission is that this Bill provides no more funding for those in buildings under 11 metres in height now that the funding window has closed. While medium-rise buildings come more firmly into scope, which is welcome, why should any residents be forced to pay to put right bad practice that was not their fault?”

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46. “Absolutely. The right hon. Gentleman almost read the next line of my speech—I do not know how he did that from his seat over there. Leaseholders and residents should not have to pay a penny for defects that were not their fault. Thousands of pounds extra in insurance are being paid by completely innocent homeowners to compensate for a safety standard that, while of course is better than nothing, is quite frankly not the standard that it should be—and that is after remediation to the standard has been carried out through this Bill. Meeting the established building regulations standard would perhaps cost more, but why should residents be condemned to live in buildings remediated to a lesser standard than the one that we consider safe for new homes?”

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47. “The right hon. Gentleman is making a typically cogent, sensible speech. Is not the logical conclusion of what he is driving at that buildings should be remediated to a standard such that they can be insured at reasonable levels and will get mortgages, and that that is the building regulation standard we require for new buildings?”

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48. “I am extremely grateful to the Minister for giving way during a very serious and measured speech. She referred to the standard of remediation. A number of Members, including myself, raised use of the standard of tolerability instead of building regulations. Are the Government willing to review the standard of remediation so that after remediation, buildings are not left, as they are now, with flammable cladding on the outside?”

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49. “They must extend agreements to SFI27, provide a second chance and certainty on the SFI, and protect farmers from substandard imports. Our farmers protect our countryside—”

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50. “Add to that the fact that direct payments are capped at just £600 this year, diesel has topped £2 per litre, the heavy burden of the family farm tax, a 32% spike in ammonium nitrate costs and the Conservative-designed upcoming carbon border charge on fertiliser from January, and the result is that farmers have been pushed to the very brink of viability and much else. To make matters worse, the Government ran all this scheme on a first come, first served basis. That is not a serious way to run a £930 million public programme. At least if people do not get Glastonbury tickets, they are not required to plough up a wild flower meadow afterwards. Finally, I call on the Government to take four key actions. There should be no cliff edge.”

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