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11.22 am
Willie Rennie: I thank Members across the Chamber for their supportive comments. My hon. Friend the Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) was very supportive, as were the hon. Members for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) and for Brent, North (Barry Gardiner). I also thank the Minister. He was effusive in his support and praise of the Bill for a whole 45 minutes; I did not know that he liked it that much. I am grateful for that extensive support, as are the other Members in the Chamber.
I should like to summarise the Bill again. It gives the power to suspend and closes the 45-day loophole. It stipulates a limit of 75 days’ suspension, beyond which the Driving Standards Agency cannot go. It covers trainees and approved driving instructors, so it is comprehensive. Furthermore, it covers only the most serious cases: only those instructors who are already on the path to removal. It has not gone beyond that, so any scurrilous allegations about the character of individuals can be avoided. There is a defined process that has already been tried and tested, and we will not go beyond that.
If the House gives its support this morning, I shall entrust the Bill to my old boss, Lord Tyler of Linkinhorne, in another place. I am sure that Members there will see the merits of the Bill, but if they do not I am sure that they will succumb to Lord Tyler’s charm. I hope that the Bill will go through all the stages in the Lords. It is a good Bill, not only for the House but for approved driving instructors and trainees. It is also good for those, young and old, who are learning to drive.
I see that the Minister at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Poplar and Canning Town (Jim Fitzpatrick), is in his place. He gave me great advice and support at a time when I had almost given up. I had almost succumbed to the drudgery of the private Member’s Bill process but he teed me up and got me going again. I am grateful to him for his wise counsel and support in making sure that the Bill has progressed to this stage.
Finally, I pay tribute to Lesley Anne Steele. She has provided a great service. It was tough for her to put her name into the public domain and to be talked about so extensively this morning; I am sure that she wishes to forget about it all now. She has put her name out and campaigned for change. She saw the injustice and was determined that nobody else would be subjected to what she was subjected to. I am grateful to Lesley Anne; this should be called “Lesley Anne’s Bill”. She is a great person, and pretty steely—Steele by name and steely by nature. I am grateful for her support and I hope that her Bill receives the support of the House this morning.
Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.
Leaseholders’ Rights Bill
11.25 am
Mrs. Jacqui Lait (Beckenham) (Con): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
I start by declaring an interest. I am a private sector leaseholder and a director of the management company of the block of flats in which I live. I used to be chairman, but resigned because of a potential conflict of interest due to a planning application from the block next door.
I congratulate the two Members who have got their Bills through to Third Reading today; I hope that they will see their names in lights. After 17 years in this place, this is my second private Member’s Bill, and it stands about as much chance of getting through as the first one did. That first one was about a similar subject; it was about commonhold and leasehold issues before 1997. This Bill, however, is much more concentrated on public sector leaseholders. I say here and now that I am conscious that the Bill is defective; should a miracle happen and it get into Committee, I will be only too happy to correct it. There is an implication that the Bill applies to private sector leaseholders. My concentration and interest today is on public sector leaseholders, and I would seek to correct the mistake, to which I freely admit, in Committee.
I thank those who have helped with the Bill. I start with the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes). Frankly, I lifted most of my Bill from his Bill of last year. At that time, I pointed out from the Front Bench the same defects in his Bill for which I have just apologised in mine. He and I have long had a concern about the rights of public sector leaseholders and the unfairnesses that they face. I hope that, for once, we are in step together because we have to right the wrong that public sector leaseholders face.
I thank the many groups of public sector leaseholders that have briefed me extensively on their difficulties. I am thinking of leaseholders from Westminster, Camden, Islington and Orbit South, which has been transferred out of Bexley housing department. Part of the reason why I am interested in this subject is that I, too, have public sector leaseholders in my constituency of Beckenham. I have long sung the praises of the housing association, Broomleigh. However, the association and I have crossed swords over many years on the issue of public sector leaseholders. I think that it is beginning to get things right; it is certainly not as backward as some of the other registered social landlords that we are having to deal with. I also thank the Clerks and the Library for their help in preparing the Bill. I am grateful to everybody who has contributed to the Bill.
Simon Hughes (North Southwark and Bermondsey) (LD):
I want to put on the record how supportive the hon. Lady was last year when my private Member’s Bill was trying to make progress. I fully support this Bill and want it to make progress, because it is hugely important to thousands of people. Depending on how long the debate goes on, I may have to disappear for a little while to carry out constituency duties, as I hope the hon. Lady will understand. However, I will be back.
She has my commitment that I will be there today and any other day before the end of this Session when she needs me.
Mrs. Lait: I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I promise that I am not planning to speak until he gets back—that would be totally unfair and would certainly take credit away from the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Gillingham (Paul Clark), for his marathon. I hope that we will still be discussing the matter, because I know that the hon. Gentleman has serious experience and expertise to contribute to the debate.
As I said, I have been aware of leaseholders’ problems for many years. In my original constituency of Hastings and Rye, we dealt with the difficulties that private sector leaseholders had. Over the years, we have managed to give them the right to consultation and to get their own quotes for works. Although the system is by no means perfect, private sector leaseholders, if they have the will to do so, can manage their own blocks and properties properly and to their benefit. However, that is not true in the public sector.
When I talked to my predecessor as MP for Beckenham, he briefed me about the difficulties of his public sector leaseholders, who have become my public sector leaseholders. As I have said, Broomleigh, the local large registered social landlord that took over Bromley’s council housing, took over some public sector leaseholders with it. Practically the first thing that I had to do as the MP for Beckenham was try to sort out the difficulties that those leaseholders were having, such as enforced contractors, a lack of consultation on the repairs that had to be done and very little option in the repayment of substantial sums. Many people felt that they had no input into their contracts and that they were badly managed.
Broomleigh is a very good housing association and picked up on those problems. It created a leaseholder unit and started to put in place the procedures that I wish to introduce under the Bill. The issue then died away, however, and the leaseholder unit was disbanded. There was then another problem, about bay windows in blocks of flats. It reignited all the problems about the lack of consultation, the lack of the right to bring forward other contracts, and leaseholders having no control over costs and little control over payment, with huge bills and demands for instant payment. I am glad to say that Broomleigh then resuscitated the leaseholder unit. Although people were still unhappy and there were flaws in the process, we are beginning to see a much more sophisticated understanding from Broomleigh of how to manage a block of mixed tenure, where there are public sector leaseholders who react differently from tenants when faced with repairs.
However, that best practice—at least, it is getting towards best practice—has not been copied by many councils or by other RSLs. My Bill would give public sector leaseholders the right to consultation, to get quotes from other contractors for work that needs to be done and to have a wide variety of repayment methods to ensure that bills are paid. Public sector leaseholders recognise that their properties have to be maintained, so there is the will to contribute to maintenance and repairs. What particularly irritates them is that they are unable to contribute to the process by which those repairs are carried out. They have no right to monitor
whether they are carried out well, and demands for money come without a by-your-leave. They can see how inefficiently many contracts are managed.
Over the years, because of my interest in the matter, I have had contact with a wide variety of public sector leaseholder organisations. There was one meeting, probably the largest public meeting that I can remember, with public sector leaseholders in Tower Hamlets. They were incandescent with rage about how the council was dealing with their leases. Since I published the Bill, I have been contacted by leaseholders in Camden, Westminster and Islington. I have notified the hon. Members for Islington, South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) and for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck) about the Bill and the fact that I would be mentioning leaseholders in their constituencies. I know that both have worked hard on behalf of public sector leaseholders.
What has caused more difficulties than anything else is the sheer size of the bills that public sector leaseholders are asked to contribute to. Not all, but a lot, of the work has been driven by the decent homes standard. None of us would say that it was wrong to bring that in, but the problem is that most RSLs—I use that term to include both councils and housing associations, because we will be here even longer if I have to explain that each time—treat public sector leaseholders as though they were tenants. They also overload bills with management costs and a whole variety of other expenses that they think they can get away with.
Barry Gardiner (Brent, North) (Lab): I pay tribute to the hon. Lady not simply for introducing the Bill but for her work over many years. I remember working with her on the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002—we have been round these houses many times before.
I wish to highlight the point that the hon. Lady has just made. The problem is not simply that RSLs often treat leaseholders in the same way as tenants. In one particular way, they treat them very differently. As she said, that is in loading their service charges while providing no explanation of how those charges are broken down between the rental and leasehold income that they receive. I am sure that she could adumbrate that point with many cases, but it is an important one to make.
Mrs. Lait: I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman, and I agree entirely. In fact, in due course I shall mention a letter that I have received from somebody who not only found themselves in that position but has been told how much they are paying compared with other tenants, which is way out of kilter. The hon. Gentleman and I are at one on this issue, and anyone who understands the problem knows that this is a cross-party issue, because it is the same wherever it happens.
Some people may remember that earlier this year, an elderly lady from Ramsgate aged 91 received just before she died a £16,000 bill for work on her flat to meet carbon dioxide emissions standards, and she had to take out a mortgage. That was, to say the least, insensitive. Leaseholders are simply told how much they have to pay. We have all worked very hard for people in the private sector, who in contrast are consulted and have the right to get their own quotes and pay in different ways, and whose management charges relate only to works to be done.
As a slight digression, I add that most of the problems arise from the original legislation that we passed in the ’80s giving people the right to buy. At the time I was not in the House, but I suspect that the thought was that the public sector would behave in the same way as the private sector. Sadly, all these years later that is not what has happened.
Simon Hughes: I was around at the time, just about, and I remember that people were given bad advice. The mood was in favour of buying. Children told their parents “Go on, buy your flat, it would be good.” However, no one looked at the small print, which said that people would have to pay not just for things connected directly with their flats, but for the district heating system and the gardens. Suddenly they were facing bills that were much bigger than they had ever contemplated.
Mrs. Lait: The hon. Gentleman is quite right. I suspect that when the legislation was written, there was no conspiracy, but this was simply one of its unintended consequences. I could wax large about the problem, and indeed would be happy to introduce another Bill in an attempt to deal with it, but I thought that if I kept it short and sweet, we might be able to get somewhere with this particular issue. If we can give public sector leaseholders the right to consultation, we shall be able to dig down into what the charges are and how they relate to their properties.
One of the groups that contacted me is the Islington Leaseholders Association. I received 40-odd letters from its members. Vicki Leonard, who lives in N1, wrote:
“Leaseholders do not have to be consulted on any works...That was annoying enough in itself but more annoying is the astronomical cost of everything they do”.
That basically constitutes inefficiency. I received a long and detailed letter from a gentleman called Douglas Cape, who wrote:
“At the first public meeting...the Project Officer...said he was only there to talk about the new window design. When it was pointed out to him that his own invite to the meeting...said ‘You will have the opportunity of asking any questions regarding the contract’ he refused to acknowledge his own letter and said he still could not answer any questions.”
It is disingenuous, to say the least, of RSLs to say that they are consulting in such circumstances.
What was said in those letters was echoed in many others from, for instance, members of the Association of Camden Council Leaseholders and the Churchill Gardens lessees association. I am hugely grateful for the time that they spent briefing me on their problems. Another member of the Islington association raised the issue of the sums that are charged, and the fact that it is not possible to obtain alternative quotes. Geoff Shirley wrote:
“I and other leaseholders...have been informed by HFI that to replace our windows, 2 bedroom units will be charged £8K-£9K.
Considering the fact that only one main contractor has tendered for this work is outrageous. How does HFI justify that sole price when they have no other comparison price.”
Public sector leaseholders should not be faced with such sums when they are unable to wield any influence.
The position is made worse by the current agreements between RSLs and single suppliers of maintenance. The Government have been pushing that arrangement for understandable reasons: it is often more efficient for a
contract to be let over the long term and for a single contractor to do maintenance work on an estate. However, in the event of a large replacement programme, the contracts with the sole suppliers do not allow competitive tendering. It is not beyond the wit of man, or the lawyers, to write a contract making it clear that it relates entirely to routine maintenance, and to specify that when there are larger contracts to be let, competitive tenders will be required. That would allow public sector leaseholders to bring their own contractors in.
Another problem is that large public sector organisations often have a list of preferred suppliers. While that reassures such organisations that the standards on which they insist will be met, it also constitutes a closed shop, and does not allow public sector leaseholders to bring in new contractors who might do the job as well as, if not better than, those on the public sector list. I want public sector leaseholders to have that option. I do not want to become involved in a great political debate about whether it is a good idea—
Mrs. Lait: But I am happy to give way to the hon. Gentleman, who is about to turn this into a political debate.
Barry Gardiner: Absolutely not. I entirely agree with the hon. Lady that both private and public sector leaseholders should have the right to consultation and the opportunity to propose alternative contractors. That has been common ground between us for many years. However, I should like to know why she believes that section 151 of the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002, which amends section 20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, does not provide adequate remedies for public sector leaseholders.
Mrs. Lait: One of the problems of discussing leasehold is that we become involved in hugely complex and technical detail. My understanding, however, is that the Government have their own problems with the 2002 Act. Implementing it has not been as easy as writing it. I am merely trying to encourage the Government to do what they wanted to do in that Act. It must be plain that I am in consensual rather than opposition mode today. The hon. Member for Brent, North (Barry Gardiner) and I are in agreement: we both want to improve the position of public sector leaseholders.
Another problem that causes many people grief is the inefficiency of the contracts when they are let. I referred earlier to a very sweet and sad letter that I had received. Jean Harwood wrote:
“My big immediate problem is time. Originally HFI... told us all work had to be completed by 2008. I cut my holiday short as a result but nothing happened. Then January 2009 was given to start erecting scaffolding. Still nothing. However, they did start on the first block on March 2nd. It took 5 weeks to completely erect that. Incidentally, we were told they would erect two blocks at a time. The second block was started April 27th and the third block May 5th. I’m also informed that when this block is finished the fourth block will be done (that is where I live). To date NO windows have been replaced. I was assured by HFI that they would start work as soon as the scaffolding went up and would be down within 2 weeks on completion.”
That is not an unusual tale for such contracts.
Martin Kneidinger wrote to me about
“Very expensive charges compared to the work delivered and the time it took to finish. (More than a year!) Finished work is very poor quality and would not be acceptable on any private site in London I have been working on as an architect
We chose the 2 year interest free payment plan and to do that we had to start paying our bills before work was finished. Nowhere near finished to be more specific.”
Those issues come up time and again. Here is a quick example from Karen Neale, who writes about
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