HC Deb 27 July 1977 vol 936 cc876-86

Lords Amendment No. 15 agreed to.

Lords amendment: No. 16, in page 5, line 5, leave out from "that" to "is" in line 7 and insert "he".

Mr. Stephen Ross

I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

This is a drafting amendment which is just to simplify the wording.

Question put and agreed to.

Mr. Deputy Speaker

We now come to Lords Amendment No. 17, with which we are to take Lords Amendment No. 51 with the three manuscript amendments thereto.

Mr. Sainsbury

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Will you indicate where we can obtain a copy of the manuscript amendments?

Mr. Deputy Speaker

If they are not available, I am prepared to suspend the sitting for a few minutes until hon. Members can obtain them. I took it that hon. Members had copies of the manuscript amendments.

Mr. Rossi

I have a copy of the manuscript amendments which by courtesy has been handed to me, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but this document was handed to me in the Chamber only a few moments ago. It could well be that other hon. Members are disadvantaged by not having been supplied with copies by those who have put down the manuscript amendments.

Mr. A. J. Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed)

Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I obtained copies of the manuscript amendments for myself from the Vote Office before these proceedings began.

Mr. Michael Morris

Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I, too, went to the Vote Office at the beginning of these proceedings and I was certainly not handed any manuscript amendment. May we know whether any other manuscript amendments are to be cast upon us during these proceedings?

Mr. Deputy Speaker

It is only right that hon. Members should have all the documents that are necessary to dispose of the business. I assure the hon. Members who have raised these points of order that there are only these three manuscript amendments, which are to be taken with Lords Amendments Nos. 17 and 51. If they are satisfied, I can give them copies now and we can proceed. If they feel otherwise, I am prepared to suspend the sitting for 10 minutes until they get copies.

Mr. Rossi

I must ask that we follow your last suggestion, Mr. Deputy Speaker, because it is only right that hon. Members should study these amendments. Censure has been passed on my hon. Friends for not having obtained copies of these amendments from the Vote Office. One could well ask when they were put in the Vote Office. They were certainly not there when the proceedings concerning this Bill began, because they were thought up and produced after we had started our discussions. Therefore, unless hon. Members are to be expected to walk in and out of the Chamber every 10 minutes to see whether new manuscript amendments have been tabled, it is an impossible situation. Therefore, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I feel that it would be in the interests of the House if the sitting were suspended for a short time.

Mr. Deputy Speaker

If we can settle this matter by suspending the sitting, that will facilitate the business.

I suspend the sitting for 10 minutes.

Sitting suspended at 3.23 a.m.

3.33 a.m.

Mr. Deputy Speaker resumed the Chair.

Lords amendment: No. 17, in page 5, line 11, leave out "appropriate" and insert will give him a reasonable opportunity of himself securing accommodation for his occupation.

Mr. Stephen Ross

I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

Mr. Deputy Speaker

With this we may take Lords Amendment No. 51 and the amendments thereto.

Mr. Douglas-Mann

I beg to move the manuscript amendments to Lords Amendment No. 51—

Mr. Deputy Speaker

When we get to Lords Amendment No. 51, the hon. Gentleman may move the manuscript amendments formally, if he wishes to press them.

Mr. Douglas-Mann

In that case, perhaps I may speak to the manuscript amendments.

Lords Amendment No. 51 is one which the House will regret passing as it stands. The effect is to remove the duty upon the local authority to provide accommodation for a family who have become homeless intentionally, and "intentionally" is defined to mean someone who has deliberately done or failed to do something in consequence of which he ceases to occupy accommodation which is available for his occupation.

I do not know of any homeless family of whom it would not be possible to say, going back in history, that they had failed to do something which they should have done. I have people coming to my surgery almost every week who have foolishly withheld their rent because of their landlord's failure to carry out repairs. That is an intentional act. I have people who have failed to apply for social security in order to pay their rent. That is an intentional act. Then there is the man occupying tied accommodation who quarrels with his employer and consequently loses his employment and his accommodation. That would have been an intentional act.

My amendments would add at the end of subsections (1) and (2) of New Clause E, to be inserted by Lords Amendment No. 51, the words: and does or fails to do so with the primary intention of securing accommodation under the provisions of this Act. That is the evil to which the hon. Member for Hornsey (Mr. Rossi) has been directing his argument—the person who deliberately becomes homeless in order to be provided with accommodation under the measure. If we say that somebody is intentionally homeless because at some time in the period before becoming homeless he did or failed to do something intentionally, we are cutting out just about everybody whom the Bill is intended to assist. I urge the House to accept the manuscript amendment. Without it we shall destroy the purpose of the Bill. Its value will be very small.

My third amendment is to leave out the words "in good faith" inserted by the other place in subsection (3) of New Clause E. I appreciate that the words were put in at the request of the charities, with most of which I am in close association and agreement, but their effect is to put an additional burden on the defence when it is a question of establishing whether someone has done the act deliberately. Previously, all that a person had to prove to establish that he had not done something deliberately was that he was unaware of any relevant fact. The insertion of the words "in good faith" does not advance the object for which I believe they were inserted, and it would be preferable to remove them.

Mr. Robin F. Cook (Edinburgh, Central)

The House is having to debate the amendments within four hours of receiving them from the Vote Office. Those that we are considering now go to the heart of the principle of the Bill. They arise from a major debate in this Chamber only a fortnight ago in a Report stage that took up a full Friday sitting. It would be wrong for the House to pass by the formulation that finally expresses what has been the nub of the debate on the Bill since Second Reading—the concept of self-inflicted homelessness—without some debate on it.

I hope that the House will sympathetically consider the manuscript amendments and will note that, although they were drafted at 2 a.m., they bear the signa- tures of half the Government Back Benchers who served on the Committee and would have received more than half if the others could have been found in the precincts after that hour. That is an indication of the unease about the present formulation.

It has been alleged that the definition of "intention" meets the objections raised by the seven charities that have monitored the Bill from the start. That may well be so, but one of our difficulties in receiving 54 Lords amendments at five minutes after midnight is that we have been unable to consult the charities or anybody else. The Lords amendments do not meet the objections that I spelt out on Report; nor do they entirely succeed in meeting the terms of the letter sent by my hon. Friend the Minister to those of us who served on that Committee that the amendments would make clear that the intentional homeless are to be construed as those who act with deliberation to bring homelessness about, not those who find themselves in the grip of circumstances. At report stage I felt that a number of people found themselves in the grip of a number of different circumstances which could be considered intentional homelessness.

For instance, what does a local authority do about someone who appears to be homeless as a result of rent arrears? How does the authority determine whether that was intentional, or the result of loss of income, or difficulty in meeting the rent. A number of hon. Members have difficulty in accepting that arrears arise other than from an intention, but there is the case of people having to default because of change of circumstances. How then do local authorities sort out who is homeless as a result of intentional fault and who is not?

There are a number of other points which I put on Report when I spoke for 28 minutes and incurred odium and I suspect that I would incur even greater odium if I spoke for 28 minutes at this time. However, on a strict legal interpretation of the cases I instanced on Report those people could legitimately be refused help by a local authority. All we are seeking to do in the manuscript amendment is to express a genuine fear about not getting the spirit of the clause across to local authorities.

It will not be easy for any applicant to abuse his rights, because of the many amendments to the Bill. To succeed in getting accommodation by this Bill, he will have to establish that he is homeless within the meaning of the Bill, that he is within the area of the authority to whom he applies, that he does not have a home with relatives in another locality, and that he is within a priority group as defined. Having done all that, as a result of this amendment he will have to show that he is not intentionally homeless.

It would be a minor concession to accept this redefining of intentionality, or of intentionality to misuse and abuse this legislation and not simply to become homeless.

Mr. Stephen Ross

This argument has been rehearsed many times. The hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Cook) made a good speech on Report; so did Lord Gifford, to whom I listened on the Friday before last and last Friday. This is a matter with which we tried to deal and this new clause goes some way towards meeting the point, but it is impossible to get both sides to agree to the wording.

The Association of District Councils is very much opposed to it. Discussions have taken place on slightly different wording, but local authorities feel that it would be putting an unnecessary burden—a sort of double proof, as lawyers describe it—on them. None of us wants to disqualify other than those who set out to buck the system so it will rest on the authority to decide that a person is intentionally homeless. The authorities are obliged to give reasons in writing, and that is extremely important.

The hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Mr. Douglas-Mann) referred to the addition to the Bill earlier today in the Lords of the expression "good faith". I went to great trouble to get into the Bill words that would meet the fears of the voluntary bodies that one or two local authorities would try to find a way out of the Bill. It was at their request that these words were added and we went to great trouble to see that a manuscript amendment was put down this morning in the Lords and passed this afternoon.

If the voluntary bodies have difficulties with definition, it is beyond me. but they sought to fill a gap in the Bill last night and this morning and I am disappointed that they are not satisfied when the amendments seemed to meet the point last night.

Mr. Douglas-Mann

The proposal to delete the words was not put forward as a result of consultation with the voluntary bodies. It represents entirely my view and that of those with whom I have discussed the matter. The words detract from rather than add to the Bill.

3.45 a.m.

Mr. Ross

I appreciate the point, but I cannot ask the House to accept the manuscript amendments. That would be to break faith with the people with whom I have had discussions. The manuscript amendments would put the onus back on the local authorities.

It has been rightly said that we have tried to achieve a consensus on the Bill. It is not a bad Bill for that. That we have had discussions and have come up with an amended Bill which seems to go a long way to meeting the fears of local authorities and the voluntary bodies is an achievement, in spite of all the rude remarks made in the House.

I ask the House to agree to Lords Amendments No. 17 and 51 as drafted and request the withdrawal of the manuscript amendments.

Mr. Hugh Rossi

I support what the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Ross) has said about the Lords amendments and the manuscript amendments.

This matter has preoccupied and exercised the minds of hon. Members in Committee and on Report. We were concerned to ensure that genuinely homeless people would be provided for and found homes by local authorities, but, at the same time, we wished to ensure that the door was not opened to people to abuse the system, and deliberately to create homelessness for themselves in order to be rehoused by local authorities before people who had been patiently waiting for many years on council housing waiting lists. We wanted to stop queue-jumping.

We have tried a whole range of words in order to achieve our aim. In Committee we spoke of people who were homeless through circumstances which they could have foreseen. Objections were raised to that form of wording on the basis that if somebody defaulted on his mortgage because he had not the money they were circumstances which he could have foreseen and he would have been penalised as a result of using that form of wording. Objections were raised to the form of wording which referred to people who had been rendered homeless through no fault of their own.

Now we have the wording proposed by the other place, which is the best wording that parliamentary counsel have been able to devise to try to meet the clear Mention of hon. Members in Committee and on Report. It is always possible for people to nitpick over wording and to be clever about it. The difficulty is to achieve in legal terms something which reflects as precisely and in as watertight a way as possible the intention of Parliament. Given all the limitations on language, this is the best wording that we have been able to devise. We would seek to alter this wording at our peril.

Let us look at the wording which has been criticised by the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Cook) and the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Mr. Douglas-Mann). It is: becomes threatened with homelessness intentionally if he deliberately does or fails to do anything, in consequence of which he ceases to occupy accommodation which is available for his occupation and which it would have been reasonable for him to continue to occupy. Let us consider some circumstances. Let us take the case of someone who goes into an off-season holiday let, to which the protection of the Rent Acts does not apply. At the end of the letting he goes to the local authority and tells them that he is homeless because his landlord—with the absolute right—has turned him out. Therefore, that person has deliberately done something to render himself homeless.

If that sounds rather far-fetched, perhaps the hon. Member for Isle of Wight will permit me to tell the House of an incident involving him. A short while after he had introduced this Bill and had received a certain amount of publicity as a result, a man and his wife turned up at the hon. Member's surgery and asked him to rehouse them under his Bill because they were homeless. He asked them where they came from and they said "Portsmouth". The hon. Member then asked them what accommodation they had there. They told him they were council tenants who had left voluntarily because they thought that the Isle of Wight was a better place in which to live. They believed that the hon. Member's Bill imposed a duty on the council to rehouse them in the Isle of Wight.

These poor, misguided people had created a desperate situation for themselves because they believed that this Bill would help them. The hon. Member for the Isle of Wight saw immediately that he would have to introduce a form of wording into the Bill in order to remove any possible suggestion that people behaving foolishly in this way would have the right. Therefore, we have the words "intentionally" and "deliberately".

The other words are "or fails to do". These would cover a situation in which someone deliberately withheld his rent so that the landlord obtained a possession order to which a defence was not entered in the county court, resulting in that person being made homeless.

If we look at the words that the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden is trying to introduce to mitigate some of the harshness, we see that all they would succeed in doing is rendering this clause unworkable. The wording requires a local authority to look into an intention of an intention. It does not require a great deal of thought or speculation to realise what a task this would impose on ordinary council officers in having to examine the motivation of people to this extent. If the hon. Member pressed his amendment and required local authorities to do that, the Bill simply would not work.

Mr. Douglas-Mann

The intention in my amendment is the intention referred to in the word "intentional" in the clause. Will the hon. Member tell us what would happen in the examples that I gave—of a person withholding rent, not because he deliberately wants to be made homeless, but because he wants to force the landlord to make repairs; the person who did not pay because he did not go to the Social Security office when he should have done; or the person who went into holiday accommodation hoping to find something else, but failed to do so? Would all these people be excluded under the amendment as it stands?

Mr. Rossi

I should have thought not. They would then be acting in good faith, which was the intention of the wording introduced by the charities into subsection (3). That was part of the representations made by the charities to the hon. Member for Isle of Wight. I had doubts about the wisdom of inserting those words, but they insisted on them.

The code of guidance to be produced by the Government for local authorities will spell out to local authorities the way in which the Government and Parliament expect local authorities to act when exercising their discretion under the Bill. That is the fail-safe system. It is impossible to spell out in taut, legal language wording to cover every possible permutation and combination of human activity. All we can do is to use words that cover as best we can the generality of cases. But within that, and especially where discretion is being allowed, as it is being allowed here, the local authority could determine whether it houses or re-houses in certain circumstances, and guidance and help can be given to those authorities by the Secretary of State in more protracted and extended language in the code of guidance. That code is something that will have a statutory backing.

The hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden should be content to leave it at that instead of seeking to introduce wording into the clause to make the task of local authorities impossible in requiring them to exercise judgments over the mentality of a person, which they are not fit or competent to do. I hope on that basis he will think twice and withdraw the amendment.

Mr. Sainsbury

I was grateful to the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Cook) for emphasising that the House is in considerable difficulty in dealing with this Bill in the way it is presented to us.

We have not been able to consult the charities closely concerned with this Bill, but with the benefit of the suspension granted to us one has been able to con- sider this important new clause and the manuscript amendment to it more carefully than one has been able to consider some of the other provisions.

Mr. Deputy Speaker

This is not a new clause but a Lords amendment.

Mr. Sainsbury

The Lords amendment seeks to add a new clause, New Clause E. It relates to page 11, line 7, and seeks to insert New Clause E—or that is what it says on my copy.

I conclude that the key word is "deliberately". It is right that we should be concerned not to exclude from the Bill's provisions cases of the type mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Melton (Mr. Latham)—in other words, those who have not paid rent because they did not think they were entitled to a rent allowance or rebate and did nothing about it. But in those circnumstances they have not done something deliberately. The words are deliberately does or fails to do". If it is not something they know about, they cannot deliberately do it or fail to do it. It appears that only two Members on the Government side of the House signed one manuscript amendment and the other manuscript amendment has only one such signature. The manuscript amendment complicates the problem of the housing authorities in making a judgment on the meaning of the word. It would not reinforce the protection given to those cases that have been referred to.

I therefore support the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Ross) on this occasion in asking the House to approve the Lords amendment and to reject the manuscript amendment to the Lords amendments.

Question put and agreed to.

Lords Amendments Nos. 18 to 21 agreed to.

Back to
Forward to