| Housing Benefit (Withholding of Payment) Bill
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Mr. Davey: The right hon. Gentleman said that organisations, in particular the National Housing Federation, have not been consulting. Did he consult widely with landlords when preparing the Bill? Does it mirror their specific views? Has he met any landlords who are against the Bill, or are they all in favour of it? Mr. Field: Obviously, I must not take interventions, because there is a certain structure to what I want to say, and I will cover such points. After I received the letter that the hon. Gentleman received, I consulted—unlike him—the association that deals with the largest group of social housing in my constituency. It is probably one of the largest in the Column Number: 091 country. The association said that, provided that we adopted the Liberal Democrat policy of establishing sin bins, it would have no worries with the measures under the Bill. It was not talking about policy officers writing papers to lobby MPs, some of them misusing public money in doing so. I shall return to that when I get to the Floor of the House—if people want to involve themselves in politics, they must expect a proper fight.Mr. Clappison: In the course of the right hon. Gentleman's experiences, has he, like me, come across landlords who are as concerned as their tenants about the misbehaviour of other tenants who are antisocial, who make it difficult for good landlords to find good tenants, and who have a bad effect on a neighbourhood and thus drive down the value of properties? Mr. Field: I have indeed, as have almost all other members of the Committee. I have not received any representations from those landlords—those vagabonds—who buy up houses as cheaply as possible, shove in people on housing benefit, and happily witness the collapse of decent working class communities because of their failure to act as proper landlords. I was therefore pleased when my hon. Friend the Minister told me that they could not support the clause because of the European convention on human rights, but would put proposals before the House that would deal with those rogue landlords. I emphasise that most landlords in my constituency and, I suppose, elsewhere, are decent people who are as appalled by this behaviour as are pensioners in my constituency who seem to be so misrepresented by their national organisation in The Guardian today. When we vote, I will ask hon. Members not to agree that the clause stand part. I will also ask them to reject new clause 14, as all of us would support the last plea made by the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton that the Minister should consult widely when he moves to regulations. Malcolm Wicks: When my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead was speaking, I reflected that the Committee was trying to discuss several substantive issues that his Bill raises. Some of them are difficult, and the Committee wanted to discuss them more fully. At the beginning, I mentioned that I recognise that we stand in the middle of the road on the Bill and are vulnerable to attack from those who think that we are not being strong enough. I tried to explain the reasons for our position. We also appear vulnerable—although I do not feel so vulnerable—to those who think that we are being too hard. However, I very much regret that the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton chose to adopt that approach, as it has meant that we have not had a proper debate. We could not properly discuss some of the difficult issues that I needed to confront. He referred to the fact that Surbiton was the scene for, ''The Good Life'', which some of us still remember with affection. In that programme, the characters occasionally dug a hole to plant plants and vegetables, but they never made the mistake of being in the hole and not stopping digging. He kept digging a hole and lost the Committee with some of his arguments. Some of them deserved proper Column Number: 092 discussion, but the manner of his approach has prevented that.The hon. Gentleman missed the point when he talked about landlords, as my right hon. Friend is concerned about the behaviour of private landlords in particular, not those in the social landlord sector. That point about rationality would be of no interest to one member of the Committee. The Government amendments do not include any equivalent of the clause, because it could prove to be unfair in practice. After all, housing benefit is an entitlement of the tenant, not the landlord. In practice, therefore, denying benefit to the landlord for a given property would mean denying benefit to any tenant who happened to live there. If the antisocial tenant moved out and a wholly innocent family took over the tenancy, it would clearly be unfair to restrict its entitlement to housing benefit. We also have concerns about the possible effect that the clause might have on the market by making private landlords less willing to let to housing benefit claimants. The Government are aware of the problems that irresponsible landlords can cause. Some areas—in particular, those where there is low housing demand—have attracted unscrupulous, even criminal, landlords and antisocial tenants, some of whom have been excluded from social housing. These people can cause misery to the local community, and often cause further decline by forcing out law-abiding landlords, tenants and owner-occupiers. People who are concerned about children and homelessness make representations, but they seem to have no understanding of the situation of law-abiding tenants who have been forced out and become homeless. Those tenants might have to sleep on their friends' floors. Their children might have been unable to go to the local school, which would disrupt their education. All of that would have happened because of the behaviour of people whose rights we have heard a lot about, but whose responsibilities need to be emphasised today. Some Committee members seem to have no understanding of that aspect of hardship and child neglect, which is caused by the perpetrators of antisocial behaviour.
4 pmI can illustrate that point by referring to a case in my constituency: a woman and her children were driven out of their home because of the thuggishness of her neighbours, which caused them great hardship. That sort of behaviour can also lead to the decline of a community. I look forward to receiving representations about that from bodies that are concerned with children's welfare and homelessness. They have neglected to do so until now, but I would welcome their evidence. Tackling the spiral of decline in such areas is a huge and complex task. Last year, the Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions—as it was then called—consulted on proposals for the limited licensing of private landlords, as an additional way of controlling the problem. Column Number: 093 However, it is important to emphasise that the vast majority of private landlords are law-abiding, which is one reason why we need to get this right. There is huge pressure on housing in many parts of the country. The Government see the private rented sector as an important way to reduce those pressures. Therefore, we want to encourage landlords and help to improve quality and standards where necessary. The proposals that we are developing are a more appropriate way of tackling problems where they exist than the possibly rather punitive approach that is suggested by clause 2. I hope that, having emphasised our need to take action in future on housing policy, Committee members will decide not to retain this clause. Question put and negatived Clause 2 disagreed to.
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| ©Parliamentary copyright 2002 | Prepared 11 July 2002 |
