HL Deb 18 November 1982 vol 436 cc656-71

4.51 p.m.

Second Reading debate resumed.

Lord Avebury

My Lords, I too wish to give a partial welcome to the Bill and in particular to some of the points outlined by the Minister in his introductory remarks. We certainly like the extension of the protection of sites of local authorities, the obligation on owners to offer agreements to all residents, the fact that the initiative must be taken by the owner and not the occupier and the prescribing of a notice by regulation which will inform residents of many of the rights they may not have known about in the past.

I first became involved in the question of mobile home residents about 21 years ago when I was a councillor for a ward in which there was a mobile home the ownership of which was transferred from an extremely good landlord to somebody who I can only describe as a villain and a shark who generated a great deal of anguish among the residents, who obviously, in the first instance, came to me as their councillor. At that time I was powerless to assist them with their complaints of harassment and evictions. I found that their situation, and that of other people on mobile home sites throughout the country, was precarious in the extreme because they had absolutely no protection at that time against unscrupulous site operators.

Then, in 1965, in the proceedings on the Rent Bill, I sought to argue that mobile home dwellers should be treated under the law at least as well as tenants—that they should have the same protection from eviction, that charges on sites should be regulated, and in particular I suggested that key money or premiums for the grant or renewal of agreements to occupy a pitch on a site should be made illegal. In case anybody wishes to look it up, those proceedings on the Rent Bill were in Standing Committee in 1965 at column 986.

It was appreciated by the Government of the day that abuses were occurring, but, as often happens with the efforts of private Members, they criticised the drafting—I confess that it was probably defective—and they said at that time that it was unlikely they would be able to provide any parliamentary time for legislation. Then, in 1968, I was fortunate enough to draw a place in the ballot for private Members' Bills and I introduced what was an extremely modest proposal for the protection of mobile home owners against eviction.

However, the problem still remains that if a site operator goes through the correct procedure of notifying a resident and obtaining an order in the court, the best the resident can hope for is some delay in the granting of the order. The site operator does not have to state his grounds for wanting possession or satisfy the court that he has met any criteria, apart from the proper termination of the contract. I shall come shortly to the provisions of Schedule 1. I simply say at this stage that the problem is that the criteria which have to be satisfied by the site operator to obtain possession under Schedule 1 do not apply in cases where there is no agreement between the owner and occupier, and that is still the nub of the problem, despite the difference in the balance of this Bill compared with that of the Mobile Homes Act 1975.

I consider that a site operator should now be required to establish that he has compelling reasons for wanting possession, that those reasons should apply whether or not an agreement has been made under the 1975 Act as it will be amended by this Bill, and that those reasons should be confined, for example, to overcrowding of the site, serious arrears in the payment of charges, serious breaches of any terms of the agreement, deterioration of the mobile home to the point where it has become a nuisance or health risk, expiry of planning permission or site licence, or that the resident is not occupying the mobile home as his only or principal residence.

As regards charges, the 1975 Act has not been effective, since, as the Minister pointed out, only one-third of the people on the sites have been able to secure written agreements, and although obviously the present Bill would result in some increase in the numbers who are protected, it still puts the onus on the resident to pursue his rights where the site operator is negligent or deliberately fails to carry out the duties imposed on him under the Bill. I am not sure we shall get very much further, knowing the attitude of some site operators, and I would remind your Lordships of what was said on this matter in paragraph 355 of the report of the Mobile Homes Review, the excellent study carried out by the Department of the Environment and the Welsh Office: Lack of time, misunderstanding, ignorance, and in some cases fear and deliberate and often successful attempts at evasion, have limited the rights the Act sought to give". Among the pressures put on residents were the threat of increased site rents, only for those who chose to enter into an agreement, exorbitant fees charged for the agreement itself, and the provision of additional capital sums to be paid annually by future residents to whom an agreement could be assigned. In paragraph 357, the document said: The fundamental weaknesses of the Act"— that is, the 1975 Act— stem from the principles on which it is based; it depends on negotiation between two parties when their negotiating strength is in many eases unequal". and that is still the case. The site owner has powers and the resident considers that those powers are in many cases much greater than actually exist. One need only look at the letters one receives from people on these sites to realise the enormous difference in the psychological position of the respective parties. I am looking at one I received from a person on a site in South Devon, who wrote: It must be very difficult for anyone outside a mobile home to imagine how threats, abuse and fear, with worry, can bring about the total immobility of an ordinary person". That ordinary person has to take action in the courts to enforce the rights given to him under this Bill, and that is a fundamental difficulty; the Bill puts the onus on the resident to pursue his rights in the county court where a site operator has declined to offer him an agreement, and he must do that within the short space of about three months. The owner is supposed to offer the resident a written agreement, but if he does not do so, it is for the occupier, and the occupier alone, to apply to the court for an order making such an agreement. I do not think it is fair to make the securing of the right to an agreement—which everybody agrees he should have—conditional on him taking a quite complicated action. Many people will not be aware that they must take that action, and even if they are aware of it, for the reasons given by my correspondent in that letter, they may be psychologically incapable of taking it.

Noble Lords will be aware, from the paper sent to us by Age Concern, that about one-quarter of the residents of mobile homes sites are over the age of 65. One can imagine that these people in particular may be very nervous at getting involved in legal matters. They may not think that they are going to understand the procedures, and they may fear that they will be taking on a liability to pay solicitors' fees which it will be impossible to quantify in advance if they go to an arbitrator. I am not sure what the position is there; and, if I do not know, I dare say that many of the people on mobile home sites do not know who is going to pay the fees for the arbitrator. Is it going to be the resident or the occupier, or are they both going to share the fees? It does not make that clear in the bill. But why should anybody have to undergo the trauma of court action or of a formal hearing before an arbitrator to enjoy a right which Parliament has agreed for some years that he ought to possess? Perhaps the Minister can tell the House what representations have been received about the weaknesses of this particular provision, and what suggestions have been made for strengthening it. One possibility which occurs to me would be to make any variation in the charges or in other conditions which are implied in the grant of a licence to occupy part of a site unenforceable in the absence of an agreement; so that there would be some positive financial penalty involved in the site owner failing to offer an agreement—not one called into being by an action taken by the occupier, but it would be an automatic penalty because, unless he offered an agreement, he would not be able to increase the site charges or to vary any of the other terms of the agreement. I think that that might be some incentive to the unscrupulous operator to make the offer which he is required to make under this Bill. In passing, I may say that we are not claiming that 100 per cent. of the site operators are unscrupulous or brutal in their treatment of the occupiers of mobile homes on their sites. We are talking about what is a tiny minority which in the past sometimes has given a bad name to site operators as a whole; it goes without saying, or it should, that Parliament is legislating in these matters for the exception and we all agree that the vast majority of site operators would normally observe the legislation which Parliament has enacted. But even if it is made as certain as can be that agreements are offered, if there are no restrictions on the terms and the courts are given no guidance, there is I think a danger still that unreasonably high rents will be demanded in the proposed agreements and that premiums will still be demanded for the granting or renewal of an agreement.

That of course has been illegal for some years in the case of tenants and I think it is an example of the way in which mobile home residents are treated worse under our law than are people who live in bricks and mortar houses. Therefore, what is needed is a prohibition on key money and a procedure for arbitration within fixed guidelines where the site owner and the occupier fail to reach agreement. The noble Lord will say that there is provision for arbitration. But there are not any rules set out here as to how that is to be done. There is no formula or indication to the parties concerned as to how the calculation should be conducted.

In the 1965 Rent Act it was provided in a formula there that the rent officer had to have regard to the age, character and locality of a dwelling-house and its state of repair. Here we are talking about a plot of land, so that the criteria will have to be quite different. But one can imagine the kind of factors that might be included in the guidelines that would be given to an arbitrator or to a court of law in determining what is the proper level of charges on a mobile home site. One might consider the amenities of the site, the obligations that the agreement imposes respectively on the occupier and the owner and the location of the site. I believe, also, that rent officers would be capable of doing the job if given this sort of guidance and that, therefore, it would be better to employ rent officers than arbitrators. It would make the procedure more informal and obviously free of any cost.

I know that it will be said by the Minister that rent officers have no direct experience. This is true but they are certainly better qualified than county court judges and I believe that they would evolve standards in the course of time based on these guidelines, which are precisely what is needed. As the DoE Welsh Office study pointed out in paragraph 43.13: Security of tenure is of little value if charges can run free". But it is argued that because of differences in the way that sites are financed, it is hard to devise a system that will be fair to both owners and occupiers. Apportioning the capital values will be unsatisfatory, it is pointed out, as the cost of these are derived from expected incomes, so that the calculation would be a circular one.

The actual costs of the owner would not necessarily be any better because this would allow charges to be raised every time the site changed hands at a higher price.

Some of these arguments also apply to houses; yet they do not create insuperable difficulties for the system of rent officers and rent assessment committees, which, broadly speaking, has functioned satisfactorily since the Act of 1965.I think that it is the objective merit of the accommodation under that Act which determines the amount of rent that can be charged. Presumably, what we want to aim at in the case of mobile homes is the objective merit of a particular pitch on that site which should determine the amount that the occupier reasonably should be expected to pay.

I think that, with inflation, more frequent reviews would be appropriate for both houses and for mobile homes; but the closer the systems for determining charges between the two sectors the better. I think it is unfortunate that the Bill contains no provision for dealing with unreasonable site rules. They can be just as harsh a burden on the occupier as the level of charges. I hope that perhaps the Minister will see his way during the course of the Committee stage to accepting amendments on that matter.

Finally, dealing with the question of free sale, which has been a bone of contention as long as I can remember, this Bill allows the occupier to assign his agreement to any person approved by the owner but the provisos at paragraphs 2, 3, 4 and 5 greatly weaken that right. Why should the occupier have to give the site operator first refusal when he sells? Why should the owner get a statutory profit every time the mobile home changes hands? I was glad to hear the Minister say that this is a matter on which the Government are still open to representations. I would suggest to him that it is the obligation of those who wish to retain the system of discounts to establish their case and not the obligation of those of us who seek to abolish discounts to uphold their case. It seems to me fundamentally inequitable that the owner, who already gets a profit when he sells the mobile home on this site and who is achieving a recurring profit from the charges that he makes for occupation should then expect an additional statutory bonus every time the mobile home changes hands. There is no logic in this at all. He is not offering any service for the money he receives in those instances.

I really wish that the Government had accepted the whole of the programme of action which was set out in the admirable DoE Welsh Office report. That set out, some five years ago, a far more comprehensive list of proposals than is to be found in this Bill. That list, I think, was endorsed by most of the respondents to the consultation. Hopes as the Minister has said, have been raised and a great many individuals and organisations, have put a lot of effort and work into making constructive and detailed suggestions. It is disappointing that quite a few of these have been ignored and we end up with a measure which does not justify the excellent work that the DoE and all the organisations have put in during the past seven years since the 1975 Act. So this is really, I am afraid, a mouse of a measure to which we on this Bench at any rate can give only two cheers at the most.

5.10 p.m.

Baroness Elliot of Harwood

My Lords, I speak with some diffidence on this Bill. In the many long years in which I was on the county council, I never had to deal with mobile homes, certainly in the area in which I operated in Scotland. Furthermore, far from being in a mobile home myself, I feel slightly guilty because I have lived in London in the same house for 52 years and therefore my experience of mobile housing is nil.

However, the importance of the subject is obvious and I have listened with great interest to the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, who is obviously a great expert on this subject, not that I agree with everything he said. He has certainly had the kind of experience which I have not had. I should like to support the Government and I think that this Bill is going to be a useful one; it is one which is overdue and it is excellent that it should come so early in the new Session of Parliament.

One of the curious things I thought when I studied the document that was sent to me by the Consumer Council was that, although mobile homes are called "mobile", far the largest proportion are immobile and therefore produce a very different problem to the people who live in ordinary houses or to some of the people who live in caravans which are, of course, mobile. It is the opposite of the general order of housing where the tenant rents the house but does not own it. In the case of the mobile home he owns the house and not the site where it stands. Therefore, that leads to many problems which the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, has mentioned.

I also inquired as to how many people live in these mobile homes. It is not an enormous number, thank goodness! It is between 100,000 and 150,000. Most of them are retired persons or young couples waiting for a proper house in which to start their married lives. In both cases, finance is a vital part of their lives. Old age pensioners have not the money to spare at the end of their lives and young couples have not had time to earn enough money to buy their house.

This Bill is therefore of great importance to those who own and live in mobile houses and are in the category of persons that I have just described. The Bill insists that the site owner must make a fair and proper agreement with the owner of the mobile home which safeguards the owner against unfair action by the site owner and vice versa. It seems from experience that a number of caravan owners suffer unfair treatment by site owners and have not the money or the experience to go to the lawyers to get justice. So they suffer and according to the information which I have received from the Consumer Council, who have made a great study of such cases, they are very often badly treated by the site owners.

These quarrels are obviously very difficult to manage and very difficult to control. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, that the people who should deal with these are either the local authorities through their rent officers or some other arbitrary person who does involve the law or in any sense a criminal cause. In any case, it is vital that the agreement between the two parties should be written in simple and understandable terms and not in the legal wording which the ordinary person cannot understand.

One of the safeguards for the home owner is in the Bill: namely, that unless an agreement is made between the two parties, the landowner should not be allowed to collect charges until it is agreed that the charges and the conditions are fair. If that is adhered to, it will be a great strength for the mobile home. This would make the site owner keen to have a proper agreement which would comply with the law.

There is one other difficulty which can arise. If the occupier wants to move to other premises, he will want to sell his home and should the site owner not approve of the buyer, he can refuse to agree to the sale. This could lead to many problems for the owner. It is one of the problems which I think we should discuss in this House in Committee. It is necessary to examine a lot of these difficult problems as they alter the balance of fairness between both the parties involved.

I think that it is a valuable Bill—one that we should deal with and support. I welcome it. It is a very useful measure which will be of great value to people who live in mobile homes. I congratulate the Minister on his presentation and on the content of the Bill.

5.16 p.m.

Baroness Trumpington

My Lords, the only odd thing about this Bill is its title because as has been said a mobile home is certainly not mobile. For many people the purchase and occupation of a so-called mobile home has been an attractive choice. They seem to have a particular appeal to young couples at the outset of a marriage and to the elderly. In many cases, it seems that retired couples concerned with the high cost of maintaining their homes have sold these and have invested part of the proceeds in the purchase of a mobile home. That investment may well be considerable. A modern mobile home, new, may cost as much as £15,000. Most people living in mobile homes are clearly satisfied with the choice that they have made. I understand that research carried out in 1976 by the Building Research Centre has indicated a solid degree of contentment. But it I also clear that mobile home occupiers are a uniquely vulnerable group of people, and that in some cases their vulnerability has been exploited by less scrupulous site owners. It is often the site owner who sells the original caravan, who receives the pitch charge and sometimes other charges too, and who may well be interested in selling replacement caravans at regular intervals.

The normal rules of competition would not seem to operate very effectively on some mobile home sites. Moreover, if the occupier wishes to leave the site, the site owner may well insist on purchasing the caravan, often at a derisory price, or on taking a commission on any sale to a newcomer. The weakness of the mobile home occupier stems from the fact that this is the only housing situation where the resident owns the home but not the land. For the occupier, the mobile home is a wasting asset. Its value decreases with age. More seriously, without a permanent site on which it is placed, its value may be minimal. This means that without some guarantee of the right to occupy the site, a person who has made a considerable investment in purchasing a mobile home may be forced to accept intolerable provisions in order to avoid crippling financial loss and the prospect of being homeless.

As my noble friend the Minister has said, the nature of the problem was recognised when the Mobile Homes Act 1975, which began life as a Private Member's Bill, was enacted. That Act gave a measure of security of tenure and protection against unreasonable terms. Unfortunately, the weakness of that Act was that its provisions only came into effect if the intending occupier served notice that he intended to use the mobile home as his residence. In many cases, occupiers were ignorant of this requirement and failed to serve the notice. In other cases it seems that occupiers were dissuaded from seeking agreement under the Act, sometimes being faced with a higher pitch fee if they insisted on such an agreement. The Government are to be congratulated for their timely recognition that there is a pressing need for legislation. I am delighted to join the broad welcome which has been given to this Bill.

The fact that the initiative to offer an agreement is to be firmly placed on the owner is a vital innovation. We must take great care not to create a framework of protection which is so rigid or restrictive as to drive this useful form of housing off the market. At the same time it is important to make sure that the protection which is going to be available really will be effective in practice. Above all, this means (a) making sure that site owners really do offer agreements which comply with the new Act, and (b) ensuring that residents are not faced with manifestly one-sided agreements. It is only 13 days since the Bill was published, and it will be necessary to look very closely at the Bill during Committee stage to ensure that it will be effective in meeting its objectives.

The National Consumer Council has drawn my attention, together with that of many other noble Lords here, to a number of features of the Bill on which it has reservations. It may well be necessary to pursue all or some of these points in Committee and, strange to say, I find myself in almost total harmony with the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. It is important to make sure that there will be no opportunities for the less scrupulous site owners to impose on their occupiers arrangements which will let them off the hook. I am concerned, for example, that the Bill would appear not to bite if the arrangement between the owner and the occupier purports to forbid use as a residence. What is needed is some form of objective test as to whether or not there is genuine residence; and here I see difficulties. I think it is worth pointing out that people like the clergy, members of the Armed Forces and others whose occupations entail living in what amounts to a tied cottage—people without sufficient capital to buy houses—may buy mobile homes which they use when they have holidays but which have in reality been bought in anticipation of their owners' retirement—and why not?

The Bill provides that owners should be under a duty to offer an agreement which complies with the Act. The only sanction appears to be that the occupier may apply to the county court if the owner fails to do so. I wonder how realistic this is when a site owner blatantly disregards his duty. Perhaps a more effective sanction would be to provide that the site owner should not be able to claim pitch or other charges for so long as he fails to honour this legal duty.

Once an agreement has been offered it is important that it should be fair to both sides. The Bill provides that certain minimum provisions should be covered in an agreement, but leaves to the site owner to decide how these and other points are to be covered. The only recourse of the resident is to appeal to the county court or to an arbitrator. This must be done within three months which, as the noble Lord. Lord Avebury, said, is a very short period. It will also be too late if the significance of an unreasonable term is not realised until after the three-month period.

We know how reluctant people are to go anywhere near a court. They are fearful—and I agree with them—of the cost involved, and are frightened of the prospect of going to court. The danger is that most residents will not challenge an unfair agreement. We do not want to see these occupiers faced with onerous or restrictive agreements which comply with the Act but which no fairminded person would consider to be reasonable. I hope that the Government might be persuaded that a better approach would be to lay down model terms in the Bill itself and to provide that it should be for the site owner to initiate court action if some sort of variation is needed.

A particular problem arises over the pitch charges which are to be paid. The Bill provides that the agreement must provide for the yearly review of charges—an unusually short contract between the two parties involved, I would have thought. The only opportunity for the resident to have a say on charges is to challenge the method of fixing these within three months of the original agreement; otherwise he may well be at the mercy of the arrangements put into the agreement by the site owner. Charges are a sensitive issue, but I hope that the Government will be persuaded that a maximum limit should be laid down by the rent officer or some similar authority.

I certainly do not wish to delay the House. I have already suggested that the Bill might lay down model terms. However, if the present approach is to be retained, I am bound to say there are some features in the schedule which lay down the minimum standards for statutory agreements which cause anxiety. I believe in due course it will be necessary to consider amendments to provide that only the court should be able to terminate a statutory agreement, to tighten up the grounds on which the agreement can be terminated and to remove, or at least dilute, the very favourable rights which the Bill gives to the site owners on resale.

Finally, my Lords, there are a number of points which the Bill could and should cover but which it does not. In general, these are benefits available to other groups of residential occupiers but not to mobile home occupiers. Here I am referring to such matters as the right to information, for example, about service charges, restrictions on unrealistic domestic regulations and prohibitions on premiums.

Let me conclude by repeating my welcome to this Bill. There are not many people living in mobile homes and not many of those are unhappy; but those few who are exploited are unhappy indeed. These people are rarely versed in the ways of the law and are not well placed to secure their own interests. Their bargaining power is usually weak. The Mobile Homes Bill represents a socially useful reform, intended to redress the balance. If the reservations I have mentioned can be overcome, I am sure that all sides of the House will wish to give the new law their wholehearted support.

5.27 p.m.

Lord Campbell of Croy

My Lords, I should like to thank my noble friend Lord Bellwin for the very clear way in which he introduced this Bill. I understand the main reason for it, and that is to bring in a new and improved system of agreements. With that objective I fully agree. The provision of sites for mobile homes is now an important element in the nation's variety of accommodation. There is a need for this kind of accommodation—indeed, there is a demand for it—and I believe it should be catered for. That, I think, seems to be generally agreed.

The legislation should be clear and equitable to all concerned. I should like simply to draw the Government's attention to three matters which, I suggest, need further examination. If my noble friend can say anything in reply later this evening—and, as I think he is due to follow me immediately, I say straight away that I do not expect him to be able to reply to my points, although I have given notice about them—then that would be helpful as clarifying the Government's intentions and the purposes of the Bill. However, I shall entirely understand if he is not able to give any information this evening, and I hope that I will have been helpful simply in drawing attention at this early stage to these matters.

The first point I wish to raise is the effect of Clause 1 taken with Schedule 1. Is this placing an obligation on an owner to make an offer, or is it an obligation for him to make an agreement? I do not think at present this is absolutely clear. It is stated that an offer must be made, but I note that a copy of the proposed agreement must accompany that offer. There are likely to be situations in which a completely new agreement may not be necessary. For example, I understand that some existing agreements are for 99 years. In some cases the occupiers may not wish to alter existing agreements with which they are perfectly happy, and they may be confused about changes. In such cases the agreements may comply with all the requirements in Schedules 1 and 2 which the new agreements alter. So I ask whether the site owners will in every case have to go through the whole procedure of concluding a new agreement in such circumstances. Presumably the offer must be in writing. The offer is clearly very important and, if so, I suggest that that ought to be stated in the Bill.

On that point, too, there is an offer to be made on the sale of a mobile home—this is in paragraph 8(2) of Schedule 1—and I think that that also should be in writing, and it should be stated that it should be in writing. Both of these times of offer are extremely important and the time when the offer is made must be clearly registered. So my question on my first point is: what is the obligation imposed by Clause 1? Is it to make a formal offer, or is it to conclude a new agreement with an occupier at the stipulated time after the entry into force of the Bill?

The second matter which I should like to raise is on Clause 3, which deals with successors to occupiers. An agreement that is in existence can be continued under that clause by any member of the occupier's family residing with the occupier at the time of his death. I ask: how close is this family relationship to be? If I may illustrate my point, in Scotland—and this Bill applies to Scotland, in the same way as it does to England and Wales—there is a clan system, and in Northern Scotland, where my home is, there are many people who are distantly related as cousins, but who are very much aware of their family relationship. I give that as an extreme example.

I think it is necessary to state what closeness of relationship will be the one which limits the effect of this Bill. It may be that a definition, or a reference to a definition elsewhere in the statutes, will need to be added. This also applies to a gift and assignment. The member of a family is mentioned in paragraph 9 of Schedule 1. That is qualified by the need for the approval of the site owner to the new occupier. But, nonetheless, I suggest that the question of the extent of the family relationship should be made clear.

The third matter is the procedure for resiting mobile homes, which is dealt with in paragraph 10 of Schedule 1. The conditions intended to apply are set out there. There is some doubt, in reading that paragraph, about the words "broadly comparable". When a mobile home is moved from one pitch to another, the other land to which it is to be moved has to be broadly comparable and all costs and expenses are to be paid by the site owner. I suggest that it may not always be possible, or at all easy, to carry out this kind of move.

I understand that local authorities require owners to develop—and therefore, presumably, to improve—parts of their sites, and this requires the owners to carry out improvements at times that are not necessarily of their own choosing. Furthermore, it leads to different parts of a site achieving different standards. Therefore, an owner may find that a mobile home is moving from one stand to another but to land of a different standard, through no fault of his. In such situations, it may be inequitable for the owner to be made responsible for all the expenses of such a move. So I would ask the Government to look again at the arrangements in that part of the Bill, in the light of the kind of situation which I have described. I hope I have given my noble friend and the Government some notice of matters which I think require examination, so that they can be looked into before later parliamentary stages of the Bill are reached.

5.34 p.m.

Lord Bellwin

My Lords, I begin by thanking those who have participated in responding to the Second Reading debate. I am gratified that just about everyone has given a welcome to the Bill, although, perhaps, some more so than others. I suppose that the two cheers of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, are a plus on what I normally get from the noble Lord. They are, perhaps, one more than usual. I am sorry that he is not in his place, but I am sure that when he reads Hansard he will understand what I have said. I see that the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, is now here. I should like to repeat what I have just said, but I am sure that the noble Lord will read it in Hansard.

Lord Stone

My Lords, will the noble Lord say it again for him?

Lord Bellwin

Any measure which sets out to achieve a balance between parties where there may be a difference of view is bound to mean that someone, somewhere along the road, will feel less happy than another. I suppose that that really covers some of the points which the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, mentioned. But I am sure that he will not hesitate to bring them forward at the later stages of the Bill; and, of course, it is right that he should do so, because what we are interested in, as always, is to get the very best Bill that we can. This matter was looked at in 1977. Nothing really has been done since, but, hopefully, we shall go a long way down the road this time.

I think that this has been a valuable debate. It is clear that most of your Lordships share the view, which I expressed in my opening speech, that mobile homes provide a small but significant source of housing in this country, and that it is important that we provide a workable statutory framework for those who live on mobile home sites, and for those who run them. I will respond as best I can to the points that have been made. If I do not cover all the points, I know that your Lordships will understand that this is a normal procedure in Second Reading debates. I am certainly most grateful to my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy, who gave me notice, because that enables me, in the best traditions of this House, to give him at least some initial responses now in a way that I might not otherwise been able to do, and I will try to do that as I go along now.

Our intention is that the Bill should strike a balance between the interests of the site owners and the residents. We believe that the changes which the Bill proposes to the existing legislation will improve the position of residents in a number of ways, and I say again that I have been glad to hear the welcome that has been given to those changes. At the same time, we consider it vital that the duties which we impose upon site owners should not be excessive. We have noted the points that have been made about aspects of the Bill which it is felt should be strengthened, and, of course, we will carefully examine all that has been said and the detailed amendments that are put before us during the passage of the Bill. But I should make it clear at the outset that we will resist amendments to the Bill which, however well-intentioned, will, in our view, impose too onerous a burden on site owners; or, conversely, any which would significantly weaken the protection for residents.

The noble Lord, Lord Bishopston, referred to the need, as he thought, for a Rent Acts type of régime. In introducing the Bill, I said that we had no intention of applying Rent Acts legislation to mobile home sites. It would not be in the interests of residents to see site owners driven out of business by excessive restrictions on their freedom to operate or to make an income. The history of the private rented sector this century has shown how dire the effect of restrictive legislation can be. Of course, there have been other factors in the decline of the private rented sector, but I do not think that even the supporters of the Rent Acts—and, in many ways, I myself am certainly one of them—can really deny that restrictions have played their part, and I believe a major part, in contributing to that decline. This has made a lot of people unhappy, and not just the landlords who have found themselves stuck, sometimes for ever, with tenants with whom they thought they had a six or twelve months' contract, but also potential tenants looking for accommodation and being unable to find it because landlords are no longer willing to let. I do not want to go too deeply into that now, but I certainly do not want us to fall into that pitfall with this Bill.

As regards the point of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, about model terms—and it was also mentioned by my noble friend Lady Trumpington—as I have just said, I hope I have explained why we have not used the Rent Acts as a model for this Bill. Nor have we used the system of implied terms which the Rent Acts apply. Agreements under the Bill will be voluntary for residents but for site owners it will be compulsory to make the offer of an agreement to all existing and future residents. Our arrangements will ensure that residents will have the opportunity to find out just what are the implications of accepting or refusing the offer of an agreement, but it is quite possible that some residents will not want to accept the offer of a statutory agreement. If, for example, they plan to be on a site for only a short time—or if for some other reason they do not want an agreement—it does not seem to us that they should be forced to have one. The vital thing is to ensure that they have the opportunity, and this the Bill will provide.

I mention here the point made by my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy about the offer of agreements. Let me say only this for the moment, although I shall gladly expand on it with him later. The Bill imposes an obligation on site owners to offer statutory agreements. It is up to the residents to decide whether or not to accept. The agreement must be offered in writing to all residents, whatever agreement they already have. As I have already said, we have also decided against the use of model terms for agreements, which I know some organisations would favour.

The Bill already lays down, in Part I of Schedule 1, a number of important requirements with which agreements must comply, and Part II lists those points which agreements must cover. Beyond that, it is not clear that model terms would achieve a great deal. We would not wish to be involved in deciding what should be the site rules for every individual site. For example, it is not for us to decide whether dogs and cats are to be permitted. Nor would model terms take us very far on such matters as the level of pitch fees, unless they were accompanied by controls on the level of fees, which we do not intend to introduce. I appreciate the thinking behind the proposal for model terms, but I do not think the approach would achieve what those who support it would wish.

As for arbitration, which the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, mentioned, the provisions in the Bill carry forward those of the 1975 Act in their application to the pitch fees which site owners may charge. That is, the site owner must stipulate in the agreement that he offers to all his residents the level of the initial fee, and the agreement must provide for the pitch fee to be renewed annually. If a resident is unhappy with the initial fee or with the basis on which the site owner proposes to review it, he may challenge those terms before a court or an arbitrator within three months of being offered the agreement. We have clarified the power of the court, and the arbitrator, to hear such challenges and to require the making of agreements on terms that they consider just and equitable.

As for the point of the rent officer arbitrating, as the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, suggested, I should be the very first to acknowledge the quality of the service which rent officers provide within their own terms of reference. But their job is to register fair rents within the Rent Acts. I respectfully suggest that that is a very different matter from assessing the level of pitch fees that the owner-occupier of a mobile home should pay to a site owner. Still less, in my view, would a rent officer be the right person to settle other disputes which might arise under the Bill—for example, concerning the age and condition of the mobile home—for which the Bill provides that freely agreed arbitration is available. If resident and site owner wish to use arbitration to settle a dispute between them, it will be open to them to appoint an arbitrator of their choice. Only if they cannot agree can they then take their dispute to the court.

I now refer to the successor or family point which my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy mentioned. The Bill contains two references to "family": in Clause 3 and in paragraph 8 of Schedule 1, Part I. In neither place does the Bill define "family". It will be for the courts to decide who is or is not "family" in each individual case, as they have done in cases under the Rent Acts. I am sure your Lordships will take the point that, if we attempted to define too closely who are the members of a family, we should run the risk of excluding somebody unfairly. My noble friend's illustration of the clans in Scotland made me tremble—and made me very glad, too, that we are taking the line that we are. One would hate to have to sort that one out.

The wording of Clause 3—the inheritance provision—follows that of the 1975 Act. The provisions for the gift of a mobile home to a member of the resident's family in Schedule 1 are new. They will enable a resident to give his home and assign his agreement to a member of his family without paying commission. In this case a site owner has added protection against sham gifts. He has the right of approval of the beneficiary. His approval must not be unreasonably withheld; but if he thinks that a gift is a sham, that would seem to be a reason for withholding approval—initially, at least.

The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, and my noble friend Lady Trumpington were anxious about the period of three months to accept or to challenge an agreement. We shall certainly have to talk about this when we reach the later stages of the Bill. If your Lordships will allow, I shall not proceed with that point tonight. My noble friend referred to the fact that the Bill may contain a loophole which might enable a site owner to evade the duty to offer an agreement under the Bill by granting a "restricted right" to a resident—that is, by granting a right to a resident which does not allow him to occupy the mobile home as his only or main residence, when both site owner and resident know that that is precisely what he will be doing. We do not accept that there is a real problem here. In the first place, it is our understanding that most residential mobile homes are on sites for which the site owner's planning permission stipulates residential use, either on the site as a whole or on the relevant part of the site. Secondly, it will be open to a resident to claim that he is entitled to the offer of an agreement if the "restricted" right he has been offered is a sham, and to press his claim in the courts.

More fundamentally, I think it must be said that the whole idea of loopholes of this kind does not come from experience of mobile homes. It comes from the Rent Acts. It is said that landlords of conventional housing attempt to avoid the effects of the Rent Acts by offering sham holiday lets. But this Bill is not imposing Rent Act control on mobile home site owners. It is not giving them onerous new duties which they will be desperate to avoid. It is offering a system of agreements which we believe to be fair to both residents and site owners.

The third point my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy mentioned about resiting is referred to in Schedule 1, Part I, paragraph 10. I am aware of the concern which some site owners have expressed about the provisions for the resiting of mobile homes in Schedule 1. We shall look at the point that my noble friend has made, although at this moment I must say we do not think that this is a problem. The provision is similar to that in the 1975 Act, except that the Bill spells out the obligation on the site owner to meet the cost of resiting if the move is at his initiative. I should have thought that that was not unreasonable. Nevertheless, as with all the other points which have been made, despite what I am saying now we shall certainly look at the point most carefully.

I want quickly to cover one or two of the other observations which have been made. The noble Lord, Lord Leatherland, asked about mobile homes without wheels. The Bill applies to mobile homes without wheels. When the noble Lord, Lord Leatherland, speaks I never know whether or not he has his tongue in his cheek. I think he usually has. But I must take his question seriously. Indeed, I always take his questions seriously. The definition which the Bill uses comes from the 1960 and 1968 Acts and requires that the homes should be capable of being moved—for example, on a large lorry. I can just imagine what the noble Lord would say about that if he were in his place. But the homes do not have to have wheels.

The noble Lord, Lord Bishopston, referred to the problem of local authority manpower and asked: "How minor is 'minor'?" and "How very minor is 'very minor'?" We expect the effects of the Bill, in giving protection to residents of local authority sites, to be very small indeed on local authorities. If the noble Lord asks me how much is "very small indeed", he will have to use his imagination. The majority of local authorities behave towards their residents as well as private site owners are required to do. Therefore a problem which he perhaps fears I really believe will not be a problem of any significance. He asked, also, about people being aware of their rights—and we entirely agree. It is crucial, and in fact it is one of the themes running through this Bill that residents should be made aware of their rights. That is why—and I say it again—we will prescribe the notice to be given to residents in the agreement. We should not forget the 1968 Act and its provisions on harassment, nor the role of local authorities under the 1960 Act. These Acts are also important for residents.

This Bill is at the beginning of its passage through Parliament. We believe it is a good Bill and have been pleased by the welcoming reception which in general it has so far received. It may well be that we will have to improve it further as we go along, in the light of the examination it will receive in your Lordships' House and in another place. One essential feature we will maintain, however, is the balance which the Bill achieves between protection for residents and the interests of site operators. That balance is crucial if the provision of mobile homes is to continue to thrive, perhaps even to expand; if sites become available in the future. What we are seeking to create is a statutory framework for mobile homes that will work for many years ahead. The Government believe that this Bill can provide that framework, and I invite your Lordships to give the Bill a Second Reading.

On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.