HC Deb 01 March 1972 vol 832 cc702-14

7.12 a.m.

Mr. Dick Leonard (Romford)

I am most grateful for what is apparently a somewhat belated opportunity to raise an important matter for the civil rights of 5,500,000 council house tenants and their families.

As hon. Members will be aware, council tenants enjoy virtually no security of tenure. The tenant of a private landlord does have security of tenure under the Rent Act, 1968, and can be evicted only in a limited range of circumstances and only after a county court has considered a claim for possession and heard arguments from both sides. But the council tenant is denied that protection. His landlord, the local authority can, under the Small Tenements Recovery Act, 1838, obtain a summary order for possession from a magistrates' court without giving a reason in support of the application.

I do not think it should have been necessary for me to raise this issue in the House. Council tenants were given a firm impression last summer that the Government intended to take early action to give them the same security of tenure as private tenants. The White Paper, "Fair Deal for Housing", published last July, contained in paragraph 35, the following sentence: With the introduction of fair rents a council tenant will be entitled to the same protection against summary eviction as any other tenant". That firm pledge, of which much was made by Tory back-benchers, notably the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Curran), during the subsequent debate, has not been carried out by the Government. It transpires that all that the Government propose to do is to repeal the Small Tenements Recovery Act, which they already have power to do by Order in Council under the 1968 Rent Act. I am glad that the Small Tenements Recovery Act is to be repealed, but the effect of the repeal will by no means satisfy the pledge which the Government have given.

The sole effect of repealing the Act will be that local authorities will have to go to a county court rather than to a magistrates' court to obtain possession. They will not have to give reasons in support of their application, so council tenants will still be greatly disadvantaged compared with tenants of private landlords.

I am not suggesting that local authorities in general are irresponsible landlords who make a practice of arbitrary eviction for inadequate reasons. In the vast majority of cases local authorities bend over backwards to be fair to their tenants, but alarming cases do occur with sufficient frequency to merit concern.

One recent case concerning the Greater London Council has been brought directly to my attention. It involves a constituent of the hon. Member for Paddington, South (Mr. Scott). I have passed the details on to him, and he is happy for me to mention them in the House. I can do no better than to retell the story in the words of Mrs. Kay McNicholas, the Chairman of the Warwick Estates Tenants' Association, who reported it in the newsletter published by the Association. She wrote: On Sunday, 25th January, 1970 your Chairman had just got home from a day long conference on housing and was rushing around to prepare a meal for her patient husband when an elderly man presented himself at her door, in tears and hardly able to tell her his troubles. … After much questioning we found out that the man, Mr. Conway, was living on the twelfth floor at Wilmcote House. He was in arrears of rent—not surprising when we found his wages were barely £10 a week and his rent £5 12s. 6d.—and that he was to be evicted the following day. Mr. Conway said he had been trying to find the 'Tenants' Association lady' for the past fortnight and that only today had someone scribbled Kay's name and address on a piece of paper and directed him to her door. This poor man, orphaned at the age of seven and shoved into an orphanage, was unable to read or write fluently. No one had explained to him what was involved when a court order was made out against him. This was in September, 1969. He struggled and nearly cleared his arrears but a bout of ill health—he did not claim social security benefit; he should have been advised to do so—caused him to fall into arrears again. The G.L.C. decided to executive the eviction order they had obtained in September, in January.… We visited the area housing office and saw there the housing officer who was pleasant and co-operative but unable to stay the execution of the eviction because the matter was already in the hands of the court bailiffs. A visit to the flat in Wilmcote House showed us that the accommodation was too big for a single man and that Mr. Conway was a scrupulously clean hard-working man. Kay extricated a promise via the area housing officer that Mr. Conway would be re-housed by the G.L.C. in smaller and cheaper accommodation. Despite this promise, the eviction went ahead, and it was only through the help of the Tenants' Association that Mr. Conway was able to find a roof over his head. The Association managed to get him into a Church Army hostel for one night and then for a week in the Y.M.C.A. He had then to move to other temporary accommodation before he was eventually re-housed by the G.L.C.

This distressing case did not receive any Press publicity at the time, but it was referred to in yesterday's Guardian in an article foreshadowing this debate.

The next case I want to mention caused widespread concern when it was reported in the Sunday Times of 12th December last. The allegation made by the Sunday Times was that a 40-year old unemployed man had been evicted from a council house in Stoke-on-Trent, where he had lived all his life, partly on the ground that he was a homosexual. I have no personal knowledge of this case, although I have checked with the Stoke-on-Trent Council, which maintains that the question of whether or not the man was a homosexual was not relevant to the eviction, which was because of the tenant's failure to keep the house clean and the garden in good order. What is not at issue is that the eviction was an arbitrary one and that the tenant had no opportunity to argue in a court of law against the reasons given for his eviction.

The third case was reported in The Guardian on 23rd March last year. It involved a tenant at Haslingden, in Lancashire. The report said in part: Haslingden Borough Council in Lancashire obtained the eviction order from Rossendale magistrates yesterday against Mr. Edward Lowe, of Dale Street, Haslingden. Mr. Lowe, who has two sons aged 13 and 11 and a married son, is a former coal delivery man and has been unemployed for three weeks. He was first given notice of eviction in December, after the council had received a number of complaints from neighbours about nuisance. At that time the house was in poor repair, and Mr. Lowe had been allowing his son and daughter-in-law to live there without the council's permission. Since then, however, the son and his wife have found a home for themselves, and Mr. Lowe has redecorated the house at his own expense. On March 15, Mrs. Mary Cunliffe, Haslingden's housing officer, reported to the Conservative-controlled housing committee that the house was 'remarkably improved' and that she was 'quite satisfied with its state'. The committee was also told that the weekly rent of £2.91 had been paid up to date. The family was evicted on 19th April last year and put into a transit house run by the Lancashire County Council, where it has been ever since.

The last case I want to mention in detail concerns a tenant against whom the local council had no complaint whatever—Captain H. Julian Jones, of Aberystwyth—who wrote to me last April and whose eviction was later commented on in the British Legion Journal as follows: In the case of Captain H. Julian Jones and his eviction from a decontrolled council house by the Aberystwyth Rural Council after the statutory four weeks notice, the reason says Captain Jones, ostensibly, is that his home of 20 years is too big for him and should be used by a large family. But when he requested that his son, his son's wife and their twenty month old baby be permitted to live there with him, this was refused. He was also not given the opportunity to purchase the property, and there was no question of providing him with alternative accommodation. Hon. Members may think that on the facts as I have reported them none of these tenants should have been evicted, but that is not the case I want to argue. It may be that there were other factors involved of which I am not aware and that in some at least of these cases the local authorities had good grounds for seeking to evict. The point I am making is that whatever the grounds, good or bad, it was not necessary for the local authority concerned to argue them in a court of law, and in each case the tenant was subject to arbitrary eviction.

There are other cases known to me where evictions were not carried out but where the local authorities obtained possession orders for apparently trivial reasons. The Under-Secretary of State will be aware of cases at Hull. Whitby and Norton Rural District, Yorkshire, about all of which details were sent to the Secretary of State by Mr. Roy Haddon, of the Yorkshire Child Poverty Action Group. Mr. Haddon has written more recently to my right hon. Friend the Member for Grimsby (Mr. Crosland) giving details of these cases, stating: Two threats of eviction in general for tenants who fail to keep their gardens tidy have come to my attention—York Corporation and Haltemprice U.D.C. That such threats can be made in the way they are is a reflection of the complete lack of security enjoyed by Council tenants. Then there was the deplorable affair of Reading County Borough, which was described to the House by my hon. Friend the Member for Swindon (Mr. David Stoddart) on 11th May last year when he, said: The most recent example in my experience is that of a local authority which passed a resolution saying that, if a tenant or any member of his family was convicted of vandalism, the family would be evicted. In this case the local authority was not only proposing to punish the culprit twice for the same offence. It was also seeking to punish all the other innocent members of his family by making them homeless. While it is only fair to add that the council concerned is having second thoughts, the fact is that not only did it pass such a resolution but it would have been able to enforce it in the courts."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 11th May, 1971; Vol. 817, c. 214.] I think I have said enough to persuade hon. Members, or at least the Under-Secretary, whose courteous attention I am grateful to have, knowing as I do the very heavy demands made upon him currently in Committee, where he and I have been incarcerated for a vast amount of time in the last few weeks, and where he is under a very heavy burden of answering for the highly reactionary Housing Finance Bill for his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. I have said enough to persuade the Under-Secretary that this is not a trivial matter. The number of evictions may not be large but the evictions involve a wide range of authorities, from the G.L.C. to powerful county boroughs like Stoke and Hull and smaller authorities like Norton and Whitby.

This is not a political matter. Some of the authorities are Labour controlled and some are Conservative controlled. It is urgent to give security of tenure to the tenants of those authorities and to the much larger number of tenants who may be in no immediate danger of summary eviction but cannot really feel secure unless the threat, however distant in reality it may be, is withdrawn.

What should the Government do to give them this security and fulfil their pledge of last July? Ideally, the Government should introduce a Bill to give council tenants security of tenure. They are morally bound to do so. But I am in some difficulty, Mr. Deputy Speaker, in that I understand that it would not be in order to use an Adjournment debate to demand legislation. Therefore, while I hope the Government will introduce a Bill, or at least give full backing to any hon. Member who seeks to do so, as my hon. Friend the Member for Swindon did last summer, I shall content myself with asking the Government to give much firmer guidance to local authorities as to the grounds on which they should evict tenants and the procedures they should apply.

The best definition of the circumstances in which a local authority might be justified in applying for a possession order is contained in the policy statement recently issued by the Association of London Housing Estates. The Under-Secretary has read this statement, but I shall read part of it for the sake of getting it on the record. The association argues that a tenant should be liable to eviction only for one of the following causes: (a) Persistent and wilful non-payment of lawful rent. It should be a defence against this that the landlord has failed to carry out his obligations. (b) Failure to maintain the premises in a respectable manner, or to take reasonable precautions to protect them from wilful damage. (c) Allowing the premises to be used in an improper manner, for example, for carrying out a business, or for immoral purposes. (d) Failure (after due warning) to observe reasonable conditions of tenancy. I conclude by asking the Under-Secretary whether he will cause a circular to be sent to local authorities setting out these points and urging that local authorities should seek an order for eviction only after a tenant has been given full opportunity of objecting and of pleading mitigating circumstances, and only after a comprehensive report has been submitted to a meeting of the full council.

I hope that the Under-Secretary can agree to this. I repeat that only legislation can fully meet the point and redeem the pledge given in the White Paper.

7.28 a.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Paul Channon)

I congratulate the hon. Member for Romford (Mr. Leonard) on drawing the attention of the House to these very important matters. I agree with him that they are certainly not trivial. I congratulate him also on raising them even at this late hour of the night, when he and I are looking forward with avid enthusiasm to resuming our labours on the Housing Finance Bill in three hours' time, when no doubt we shall have many happy hours together discussing important matters in relation to the future welfare of tenants.

The hon. Member expressed his concern with sympathy and understanding. The House has learnt to appreciate his great interest in housing, particularly his interest and concern about the relationships between the 5,500,000 tenants and their local authorities. On a number of occasions he has sought to raise matters of this kind in the House and to introduce Private Member's Bills which in his view would have helped tenants.

I can well understand why the hon. Member has raised the subject and I know of some though not all of the detailed cases he used as illustrations. As the law stands under Section 111 of the Housing Act, 1957, the general management and control of local authority houses are vested in the authorities. They may recover possession of their houses by means of this power. Lettings by local authorities do not therefore carry security of tenure under the Rent Acts. I quite understand the point made by the hon. Member that a tenant is entitled to as good treatment at the hands of a public authority as at the hands of a private landlord and his argument that if the security of tenure provisions of the Rent Acts represent the minimum rights of private tenants they should apply equally to council tenants.

But local authorities are in a wholly different position from private landlords. They are under a statutory obligation to consider the general housing needs of their districts with regard to the provision of housing accommodation and in consequence they must meet a wide variety of requirements and also have reasonable latitude in carrying out their functions of management. The hon. Member has mentioned authorities of widely differing sizes from the Greater London Council down to small rural district councils. The House will agree, though, that the vast majority of authorities, whether they own 200,000 houses like the G.L.C. or only a few hundred houses like some of the smaller authorities, act on the whole with very great care and reasonableness.

It is exceptionally rare that an authority may reluctantly conclude that eviction is the only way to maintain the best management of its housing responsibilities. If the hon. Member wishes to send me details of any specific cases I will be glad to study them, but in general I do not believe that evidence exists that it is necessary to embark upon a change in the law. It would be wholly wrong for a council to embark upon a policy of evictions save in the most exceptional circumstances. Local authorities are democratically-elected bodies, answerable to the electorate for the way in which they discharge their duties. Unlike the private landlord they would need for example to take into account, for example the possibility that an evicted family would have to be housed in temporary accommodation at public expense before instituting proceedings for eviction.

The hon. Member mentioned the G.L.C. I do not have the latest statistics but I understand that recent figures indicate a rate of evictions of only 0.1 per cent. over the entire housing stock of the G.L.C. I believe that although council tenants do not enjoy statutory security of tenure, in practice they have security of tenure virtually on a par with private tenants. I have no evidence that local authorities are abusing their powers and evicting their tenants unreasonably. Most applications for evictions arise from non-payment of rents and this is also one of the grounds on which the private landlord can seek possession. Under the Rent Act, 1957, notice to quit is not valid unless it is given not less than four weeks before it is to take effect.

The Housing Finance Bill, now in Standing Committee, will make very important changes to the status of many council tenants. I will not go into the merits but for the first time many tenants need not fear eviction because they cannot afford to pay the rent. In future there will be a national rent rebate scheme covering tenants under each local authority. At the moment something like 40 per cent. of local authorities have no rebate scheme of any kind and many of the remaining local authorities operate wholly inadequate schemes.

My right hon. Friend said on Second Reading of the Bill that the availability of a rent rebate scheme in both the private and public sectors substantially increased the security of tenure because one basis of insecurity of tenure in the past has been inability to meet the rent concerned. In addition the Attachment of Earnings Act now makes provision for the attachment of earnings as a means of enforcing the payment of judgment debts and other monetary obligations.

The powers now available should provide housing authorities with a satisfactory means of recovering rent arrears in appropriate cases and their use will offer a more satisfactory answer to the problem of rent arrears than eviction. In association with this, a simple and fair means of preventing arrears accumulating is now available through the new procedures of rent actions in the county court as a result of county court rules that came into operation yesterday. It is a quick procedure for the recovery of rent from a tenant who is still in occupation.

The Government have been concerned for a long time about the existence of an archaic and arbitrary power open to local authorities under the Small Tenements Recovery Act, 1838. A local authority wishing to seek possession of one of its houses has hitherto been able to have recourse to a summary procedure not available to private landlords by applying to a magistrates' court for an order under that Act. It is not appropriate that that situation should continue once fair rents have been introduced and the new structure of housing finance is in operation.

The hon. Gentleman gave a rather partial selection of quotations from the White Paper "Fair Deal for Housing". I add a quotation from paragraph 35, to which he referred: With the introduction of fair rents a tenant will be entitled to the same protection against summary"— I emphasise that word— eviction as any other tenant. The Government therefore proposes to terminate the application of the Small Tenements Recovery Act 1838 which enables local authorities to obtain possession under a summary procedure not available to other landlords. In future a local authority will be able to evict a tenant only by an order from the county court". That paragraph set out in full the Government's intentions. There has been no intention to mislead anyone as to our intentions. I do not think anyone has been misled. Those who read the paragraph in totality can see that that is what it says, and that is what we propose.

Mr. Leonard

In the debate on the White Paper the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Curran) and my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Blenkinsop) both put the same interpretation on the paragraph as I did this morning, and it has been widely accepted by tenants throughout the country. The Minister for Housing and Construction was on the Government Front Bench throughout the debate and when he replied he did not take the opportunity to contradict that construction. The hon. Member for Uxbridge had waxed eloquent about the matter. Subsequently, on Second Reading of the Housing Finance Bill on 15th November, the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Mr. James Hill) again claimed that the Government were proposing to give council tenants exactly the same security of tenure as private tenants. Again, the right hon. Gentleman sat through the debate and did not take the opportunity to contradict. In the circumstances, I and the tenants are justified in thinking that this pledge had been made.

Mr. Channon

I am sure the hon. Gentleman makes his remarks in good faith. If there has been any misunderstanding, I hope what I have said this morning will clear it up. If the hon. Gentleman reads again that paragraph of the White Paper he will see that it is exactly as I have said. There should never have been any misunderstanding.

The Government propose to repeal the 1838 Act and the Department is now engaged in the necessary preliminaries before the order can be made. It will be made shortly. When the Act is repealed a local authority will be able to evict a tenant only by means of an order from the county court. I do not wish to exaggerate the practical effects of this small reform but it will remove this present somewhat arbitrary power.

The hon. Gentleman asked whether a circular should go to local authorities about the use of their powers of eviction. I will consider what he said and consult the other interests concerned.

The hon. Gentleman did not mention harrassment, which is relevant to this issue. The general protection against harassment in the Rent Acts already applies to council tenants. Additional protection needs to be given to private tenants in unfurnished accommodation for reasons which do not apply to the tenants of local authorities. A private landlord must be required to satisfy a county court, in the wholly different situation of private dwellings, that he has one of the statutory grounds for possession and that it would be reasonable to grant him possession of the dwelling. As the situation in the private and public sectors is different, I do not think it is right to initiate a change in the law.

The hon. Gentleman was right to raise the matter. It is extremely important and I hope that the OFFICIAL REPORT of the debate will be read by local authorities and that notice will be taken of the comments made. I believe that, especially in the stress areas, it would not be in the best interests of local authorities to evict families except in the most obdurate and exceptional circumstances. I have no evidence that authorities are doing it—certainly not in London—except as an ultimate resort. It would be wholly wrong to embark upon such a policy except in the final and most exceptional circumstances.

I shall consider very carefully what the hon. Gentleman has said. He has done a service to the House and to coun- cil tenants by raising the matter and by his other representations on tenants' behalf, not only tonight but in the past.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at nineteen minutes to Eight o'clock a.m.