Housing Bill

HL Deb 25 June 1996 vol 573 cc849-914

8.26 p.m.

House again in Committee on Clause 176.

Lord Swinfen moved Amendment No. 268:

Page 103, line 3, at end insert ("unless on completing their enquiries, the authority are satisfied that because of disability, impairment or vulnerability, the applicant would have difficulty in securing alternative accommodation, in which case the authority shall be subject to the duty under section 172.").

The noble Lord said: Under Clause 176 a local authority will not have a duty to secure even temporary accommodation for a homeless applicant in priority need where it judges that there is suitable accommodation available for the applicant's occupation in the district. People who have particular disabilities or who are vulnerable for other reasons are likely to have difficulty in securing such accommodation themselves. Alternative available accommodation is likely to be in the private rented sector.

Accommodation in the private rented sector is often particularly unsuitable for certain disabled or vulnerable people. For example, there is little private rented accommodation especially adapted for people who have particular requirements with regard to physical access. Nor does private rented accommodation offer the support services which might be required by certain vulnerable groups; for example, a warden for older people or support staff for young care leavers. Many private landlords are also unlikely to be willing to offer tenancies to individuals who have disabilities or support needs due to the extra work which may be involved.

Private rented accommodation is almost exclusively let on six-month assured shorthold tenancies, particularly when the tenant is not previously known to the landlord. That temporary nature also makes it unsuitable for many disabled or vulnerable people. Those who require adaptations to their homes to enable them to live independently will be unlikely to be able to obtain them in short-term tenancies. In order to apply for a disabled facilities grant to assist with the cost of adaptations, a person must confirm that he intends to occupy his accommodation for at least five years.

Temporary accommodation is also unsuitable for those who may be living independently for the first time, having lived in institutional or group homes. It is an essential part of settling into the community for the person to feel a commitment to his home. That commitment is likely only if the tenant has a sense of security about the tenure and the support he receives.

Vulnerable and disabled people are also likely to have particular needs in order to build up informal and formal support networks; for example, older people may require meals on wheels or home help services. Many vulnerable people rely on friends or family to provide help either with physical tasks or through emotional support. Young vulnerable people living independently for the first time need to build links with the community for friendship, support and employment. It will be much more difficult to develop formal and informal networks of support in temporary accommodation. For older people and those with disabilities, the physical and emotional upheaval of frequent moves which temporary private rented accommodation may require also makes such accommodation particularly unsuitable.

Certain disabled or vulnerable people are also likely to be less able to go through the process of obtaining accommodation in the private rented sector. Most accommodation agencies are not able to cater for the needs of disabled or vulnerable people. Most do not have audio information and many do not have accessible offices. For many vulnerable people it would be physically impossible to obtain accommodation through those agencies. For others, the stress or complexity of the process could have significant detrimental effects, worsening their mental or physical condition.

In order to ensure that vulnerable and disabled groups of people do not have to go through the stressful experience of finding private rented accommodation and coping with the insecurity that living in such accommodation entails, this amendment proposes that for homeless people in those specific groups, local authorities should have a duty to secure that accommodation is available for occupation without the requirement to determine whether suitable alternative accommodation is available.

Before we broke for dinner, I believe that the Minister said that he is inclined to look reasonably favourably upon vulnerable groups and may bring forward a later government amendment. Therefore, I hope that I shall receive a sympathetic response to the amendment. I beg to move.

8.30 p.m.

Lord Mottistone

I strongly support this amendment. I took note of what the Minister said just before we broke for dinner. I believe that he will take in a great deal of what we are saying in these amendments. However, I should like to emphasise to my noble friend the particular problems of the mentally ill in this general area of homelessness which he may bear in mind in particular when he brings forward his amendments.

It is extremely important to take on board the fact that all too frequently people who are mentally ill are not capable of looking after themselves. It may be that they are in a state in which, if they have suitable medication, they are kept satisfactorily under control in order to lead a reasonably normal life. But every so often either the medication does not work or they stop taking it and all sorts of things may go wrong. I shall not bother the Committee further with that because we have spoken of it in other debates.

However, it is not fair to expect those people to be able to look after themselves independently in a home unless it is arranged suitably for them. It is extremely important that local authorities should see them as a particular charge. I accept absolutely that that is covered by the Bill, but there are various areas where the powers of the Bill which are provided to ensure that people like the mentally ill are cared for are not sufficiently strong. Some of those have been picked up by these amendments and there are other areas.

I have been relying on the guidelines which my noble friend has mentioned. I am greatly encouraged by the fact that he realises that, in this area, there will need to be some rewording of the Bill. But it is not right to think that somebody who is mentally ill will be able to behave exactly like someone who is not mentally ill. Nor is it right to think that anybody who is showing signs of not being able to cope with life will be able to do so if you quietly tell him to get on with it and encourage him to look after himself.

Therefore, when my noble friend thinks about the amendments which are to be proposed for this part of the Bill, and when he looks again at other parts of it, I hope that he will give special thought to the particular problems of the mentally ill. With the greatest respect to my noble friend Lord Swinfen, people who are handicapped in other ways are at least able to say what they think in most cases but people who are mentally ill quite often do not have that capacity. They need to be cared for in particular.

Lord Dubs

I support this amendment. I should declare an interest as a non-executive director of a mental health trust in South London. As such, I am very much aware of the needs of people who suffer from mental illness and their need for stable housing circumstances as the best way in which to come to terms with their illness.

It is too easy for people to be overlooked in the system when they are mentally ill because they may not manifest themselves as being ill. However, they may not be able to do all the things necessary to prevent themselves from becoming homeless or to secure accommodation for themselves. Therefore, some of them need to be treated with great sensitivity consistent with their illness in order that they can be helped into housing and can stabilise their lives. I believe that this amendment would be helpful.

Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish

Amendments Nos. 268 and 268ZAA both relate to vulnerable people who may find it difficult to secure accommodation which is available. I welcome the opportunity which has been afforded to me to clarify what the Government's position is on this important issue.

The first, Amendment No. 268, would add to Clause 176(2) a duty for the local authority to secure that accommodation is available under Clause 172 if it determines that the applicant would find it difficult through disability, impairment or vulnerability, to secure alternative accommodation. Amendment No. 268ZAA is more specific in that it defines the groups of people to whom the authority should not have a duty to furnish advice and assistance where other suitable accommodation was available.

In short, these amendments seek to ensure that the most vulnerable people are not simply left to make their own attempts to secure other suitable accommodation but, rather, are treated as special cases and thus eligible for assistance under Clause 172.

It is not the Government's intention that such people should be left to fend for themselves. Instead, consideration is being given to the wording of Clause 176, to put beyond doubt that the level of advice and assistance furnished by the authority should reflect the level of vulnerability or disability of the applicant in each case. Clearly, it would not be reasonable in every case to expect a person who is vulnerable, as defined in Clause 168(1)(c)—which refers to people who are vulnerable as a result of old age, mental illness, handicap or physical disability or other special reason—to be as capable of securing accommodation as a person who is totally able-bodied and fully able mentally. Therefore, it is right that the extent of the advice and assistance given should match the degree of help needed. The Government need to ensure that the wording allows for this. Once it is resolved to our satisfaction, the issue can to a large extent be addressed in guidance. Nevertheless, that guidance needs a firm foundation on which to rest.

The Committee should also be aware that provisions on allocations in Clause 148 also ensure that vulnerable people receive priority or, if very vulnerable, additional priority in the allocation of permanent housing under Clause 6. Clause 148(2) states: The scheme shall he framed so as to secure that additional preference is given to …. (e) households consisting of or including someone … who cannot reasonably be expected to find settled accommodation for themselves in the foreseeable future". I believe that on both the homelessness point and the allocations point we have tried to cater for people about whom the Committee is concerned.

It is an important issue and one on which we are determined that the right provisions will be put in place. I listened to the cases outlined by my noble friend Lord Mottistone. They are examples of the kind of situations we have in mind. It is vital that the drafting of the Bill secures the right result. I have already said that we are sympathetic to those considerations and will seek to put forward amendments for consideration by your Lordships at Report stage. In the light of that assurance, I hope that my noble friend will be able to withdraw his amendment.

Lord Swinfen

I am delighted to receive that assurance and, with the leave of the Committee, shall withdraw my amendment. However, I may be tempted to put the amendments down again to ensure that the Minister comes up to scratch. I have not heard it from him, but in the 20 years I have been in your Lordships' House I have heard from other Ministers that they will put down amendments at the next stage of the Bill. Lo and behold, nothing materialises. When I am promised a moon in the sky, I like a moon in the sky and not a dark and thundery night. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

8.45 p.m.

Earl Russell moved Amendment No. 268ZA:

Page 103, line 3, at end insert— ("(3) For the purposes of this section "suitable accommodation" shall not include a women's refuge.").

The noble Earl said: This is another in the series of amendments which probes what is meant by "suitable accommodation" under Clause 176. It deals specifically with the issue of women's refuges. The amendment seeks reassurance on one narrow point, but I hope that it is in order if I also use it to explore a little further what the position of women's refuges will be under the new legislation.

Before doing so, I must thank the Minister's noble and honourable friends for a good deal of co-operation on the subject since the debate on the Green Paper. I am grateful for it and the position is clearly much improved, possibly even totally improved.

There are certain points on which one wishes to be clear that women who have suffered abuse will be held to be in priority need, either because of their children or because of vulnerability. It should be made clear that they will not be found to be intentionally homeless. We hear a good deal less often of it than we used to, but regrettably it still occasionally happens. We also need clarification that it will once again be made clear to local authorities which find the point particularly difficult that it is an area in which entitlement to help with housing does not, cannot and should not depend on local connection. It is an area where both the immediate temporary refuge and the subsequent longer-term housing often need to be out of reach of the pursuer. In the light of recent cases, however, one has to say that that sometimes needs to be quite a long way away.

The most specific point on which I need to ask for assurances arises from the judgment in the case of Awua. It is a recent judgment of the Appellate Committee of your Lordships' House which has caused considerable confusion in housing law. I have here the report of the judgment in Awua. What worries those concerned with women's refuges is that a local authority should not be able to say that because a woman is in a refuge she is in suitable accommodation and therefore need not be the responsibility of the local authority. Apart from any interest of the woman, it would also be a disaster for the refuge because the problem of silting up is acute. Refuges always have to be ready to receive acute emergency cases at any hour of the day or night, so they cannot have people staying long term unless there is an acute medical need. The need to move on is important.

It seems to me that the trouble with the Awua case is that there were too many reasons why the noble and learned judge decided it as he did. It would have been necessary to have several other test cases to establish the extent of the meaning of the case, but since the law is now changing it will not be necessary. For the purpose, I rely on the last paragraph of the judgment, page 226 at letters F and G. I leave out the names and addresses for obvious reasons, not wishing to breach too much confidentiality. The judge said: Section 60(1) does not require that it should have been reasonable for Miss Awua to continue to occupy [the temporary accommodation] for any particular length of time and it is sufficient in this case to say that it would have been reasonable for her to stay there until she was able to move to [the permanent accommodation]".

In that case, the problem arose from her having refused the permanent accommodation.

One can distinguish the cases by saying that a refuge and temporary accommodation are not the same. One can also distinguish the cases by saying that the last paragraph bears specifically on the point on which I ask for reassurance. I hope that that reading of the case is correct. I beg to move.

Baroness Hamwee

I warmly support my noble friend. I hesitate over the word "warmly" because it is sad to have to consider the subject at all. I should declare an interest. I am a member of the Council of Management of Refuge which provides both refuges and other services for victims of domestic violence. Through my membership of that body, I am well aware of the need for accommodation not only to be kept confidential but, as my noble friend said, frequently not to be local. It is almost a misnomer to refer to it as "accommodation"; it is far more than that. My experience of women's refuges is that good refuge services will provide counselling and advice and specialist help both for the women and the children. As the Committee can imagine, the children often require a good deal of help to work through the experiences that they have had to suffer. It is important that the accommodation and the accompanying services are not clogged up and remain available in the hope that they can be used to enable clients to move on and start new lives.

Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish

This amendment would insert a new subsection (3) into Clause 176. That subsection would provide that a women's refuge shall not constitute "suitable accommodation" for the purposes of that clause. I am able to offer the noble Earl considerable reassurance on the point.

Clause 176 relates to the duty of the local housing authority where other suitable accommodation is available for the applicant in the district. The concept of suitability was introduced into the homelessness legislation by the Housing and Planning Act 1986 and the provision is to be re-enacted in this part of the Bill.

Noble Lords will by now be fully aware of the Department of the Environment's Homelessness Code of Guidance, which is to be revised in the light of this Bill and brought up to date. It incorporates advice specifically on the use of women's refuges, stating that they, along with night shelters, bed-and-breakfast hostels and direct access hostels, are not designed to be lived in long-term". In the case of the Awua judgment the accommodation occupied by Miss Awua was not a woman's refuge; it was normal private rented accommodation. If I understand the noble Earl's point correctly, I can assure him that the words of the Awua judgment do not bear on the subject of woman's refuges. To go a little further, Members of the Committee may be aware that case law associated with Sections 58 and 69 of the Housing Act 1985 has established that a person in a "hostel" can be homeless for the purposes of Part III of the 1985 Act. Indeed, recent research on the impact of the 1981 code of guidance found that nearly all authorities—I have the figure of 99 per cent. in brackets, which is almost all of them—would usually consider an applicant homeless who faced violence or the threat of violence within the home. That is looking at it from both sides of the spectrum. When in the house subject to domestic violence she (unfortunately it is largely "she") would be considered homeless if she faced violence or threat of violence. If she went to a refuge then, as I said, she can be considered homeless for the purposes of Part III of the Act.

Our code states that, refuges should be used for the minimum time necessary". The Government have no plans to change their stance on that. In short, the Government and the guidance recognise that women's refuges should not be regarded as suitable for long-term accommodation.

In the light of that, the Government agree that women's refuges should not be regarded as "other suitable accommodation", although they can clearly provide an invaluable place of safety for those faced with domestic crises or some form of violence or abuse. They do, and will continue to, serve an essential function. Their role will be reiterated in the new guidance and the Government will consider whether there is a need for that to be covered in an order made under Clause 183. However, the definition to be used in any such order would clearly need careful consideration.

I hope that I have managed to persuade the noble Earl and the noble Baroness that there is no need to specify on the face of the Bill that women's refuges are unsuitable or that their use does not constitute the discharge of an authority's duty under Clause 176. With all those assurances, I hope that the noble Earl will feel able to withdraw the amendment.

Earl Russell

I am most grateful to the Minister for that extremely helpful and careful answer. As we are speaking for the record, to be read by people outside the Chamber, I should be grateful if the Minister could spell out that the new guidance will continue, or strengthen, what the old guidance said on the points of priority need: that victims of domestic violence are not to be taken to be intentionally homeless; and that they frequently need to be housed outside their local authority areas. If the noble Lord will simply confirm that the new guidance will say what the old guidance said, or better, my relief will be complete. I shall be grateful if he can go that far.

Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish

The noble Earl, so to speak, wishes jam on it. I believe I said that we have no plans to change our stance on the department's code in regard to refuges. However, I am happy to confirm as regards the two points he made that we have no plans to change and that the new guidance will encapsulate the old guidance.

Earl Russell

I am grateful to the Minister. I asked for jam on it and I got it—nothing ventured, nothing gained! I thank the Minister warmly and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Amendment No. 268ZAA not moved.]

Clause 176 agreed to.

Clause 177 [Referral of case to another local housing authority]:

Earl Russell moved Amendment No. 268ZAAA:

Page 103, line 20, leave out ("domestic").

The noble Earl said: The Minister may be extremely surprised to hear that in an amendment concerned with violence I propose to leave out the word "domestic". The amendment arises from the issues which the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, ventilated at an earlier stage of the Bill. I refer to anti-social tenants, unstable neighbourhoods and unsafe areas. The provision would extend the protection given to victims of domestic violence to those who have to leave an area for fear of violence from other residents or other people in the neighbourhood. That happens, and the phrase "being run out of town" is not unfamiliar.

I wonder whether the Minister can see some way, if not this way, of dealing with the problem. I suspect that he will say what I said to the noble Baroness earlier: that this is a genuine problem; I do not think that this is the solution. In that case, we all need to sit together to discuss the solution because none of us seems to have come up with one. I beg to move.

Lord Dubs

I support the amendment. It is a problem. Many of us have met or heard of people who face the difficulty. I can think of one example from when I represented a south London constituency in another place. A woman fled from a fear of violence in her neighbourhood. She sought rehousing in the borough of Wandsworth. There was a serious danger that she might be sent back to the borough from which she had fled because she had some housing entitlement there. That would have exposed her to the very dangers from which she sought to escape. Although that occurred some years ago, it is an example relevant to the concerns which give rise to the amendment.

Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish

We discussed this issue to some extent in Committee last Wednesday with regard to an amendment to Clause 158. On that occasion, in the context of discussing a proposed amendment to Clause 158, I explained that my right honourable friend, the Minister for Local Government, Housing and Urban Regeneration, had written to the honourable Member for Greenwich, confirming that he would bring forward amendments to extend the domestic violence provisions in Part VII. That intention covers not only the provisions in Clause 158 but also those in Clause 177. As I explained last Wednesday, because we rather changed the timetable at Committee stage, I was unable to table those amendments in time, but it remains my intention to do so at the next stage.

The purpose of the amendments before us is to widen the range of possible risk of violence that a homeless applicant may face in a particular locality if a local authority were to refer his case to another authority in whose area that locality was situated.

As drafted, Clause 177 restates the relevant provision in the 1985 Act. It provides that an authority may not refer a homeless case to another authority if the applicant or a member of his household would run a risk of violence, or threat of violence, from someone who might, but for the violence, have been expected to live with the applicant; or, someone who formerly lived with him or her. We accept that this rather narrows the range of persons who would fall within the scope of the test of whether there is a risk of violence.

We intend to broaden the range of possible perpetrators who should be taken into account by reference to their relationship or former relationship to the applicant. However, as I said when speaking to the amendments on Clause 158, we do not accept that the provisions should be so widened that they would extend to any perpetrator. As I explained in my contribution on Clause 158, there are other legal remedies available which applicants could pursue in more general cases of violence. I am talking about violence or abuse outside the house. Threatening behaviour and assault are, of course, already punishable offences under criminal law. It would not be unreasonable for someone experiencing violence outside the home to pursue available legal remedies in the first instance. A court would be able to attach a power of arrest to injunctions obtained by social landlords where there has been violence or a threat of violence. Taking together my remarks on Wednesday and my remarks today on the rather narrower point about domestic violence and its definition, I hope that the noble Earl is able to accept my assurance that we intend to bring forward an amendment which will, I believe, in large part meet his concerns and that he will be able to withdraw the amendment before us.

9 p.m.

Earl Russell

I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. I do not think there is anything in principle that divides us. We are united in our agreement that this matter is extremely difficult to get right.

The best way to deal with such matters is not by apparently adversarial discussion across the Chamber when I do not think we feel any need to argue with each other from any official position. It might possibly be best if we could discuss a draft of this amendment privately and quietly and, I hope, without any need to strike formal poses and move amendments before we officially see it. I thank the Minister, and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Amendments Nos. 268ZAAB and 268ZAAC not moved.]

Clause 177 agreed to.

Clause 178 agreed to.

Clause 179 [Duty to applicant whose case is referred]:

Earl Russell moved Amendment No. 268ZAB:

Page 105, line 6, at end insert ("provided always that any person who is homeless or threatened with homelessness shall he entitled to help from a local authority; and if an authority notified under section 177(1) refuses to accept responsibility for the person concerned, the Secretary of State shall decide whether responsibility should fall on the notified or the notifying authority.").

The noble Earl said: This really is a coincidence. For the second time in a row, an amendment designated "ZAB"—the one I think of as "zabaglione"—seems to have fallen to me. I do not know what are the odds against that coincidence, but they must be pretty long.

This amendment seeks to deal with the procedure when somebody is thought not to be the responsibility of a particular local authority and the authority passes him on to somebody else. My method of tackling the amendment arises from reading a great many settlement cases under the old Poor Law. The problem seems identical, and the solution may be identical. The stresses that cause the problem to fall out the way it does are almost certainly identical.

The problem tends to be that the first local authority says, "He is not our problem, he is yours". The second local authority says, "No, he is not ours, he is yours". Then they may agree to send him on to a third local authority, which also does not want him. In the 17th century such disputes used to rumble on for years until ultimately they had to be sent to the Privy Council, which sent down a resolution which in the end people had to accept however much they objected to it.

This amendment would attempt to provide that, first, everybody who presents as homeless must be the responsibility of some local authority. You cannot be passed round like a parcel until you eventually go round outside the circle. Somebody has to do it. Secondly, if the authority to which the person is sent on refuses to accept that person, the Secretary of State (or his authorised representatives) should decide who should take responsibility.

This may not be the right way of tackling this problem. The Minister may have a better method in mind. But the problem will occur, so there has to be some way of tackling it. I beg to move.

Baroness Fisher of Rednal

I support the noble Earl. In relation to domestic violence, I received quite startling figures from the DoE. That is why I join in the noble Earl's sentiments. In 1995, 7,650 households were accepted for rehousing because of domestic violence; 19,700 households indicated that they had lost their second home through violent relationship breakdowns. So what the noble Earl enunciates tonight is a very serious problem which, unfortunately, local authorities have to solve in some way or other. The only way may be with more help from housing associations. It is a very serious problem for most local authorities.

Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish

There is nothing between the noble Baroness and myself on the seriousness of the problem of domestic violence. Indeed, we discussed it earlier this evening and last Wednesday. I certainly hope that when we come forward with the amendments to which I referred, she and other Members of the Committee who are particularly interested in these matters will be satisfied.

However, while this particular amendment may include domestic violence, it goes a little further. It deals with the case where an authority to which a referral is notified refuses to accept responsibility for the person to be referred and suggests that the Secretary of State should then have the power to decide which of the two authorities should have responsibility for that person—a sort of Judgment of Solomon.

The present law, which is to be re-enacted in this Bill, is clear that whether or not a person who is unintentionally homeless and in priority need presents himself to the "correct" authority, accommodation must be secured for him. The issue we are discussing here is how it is to be achieved. I do not think the noble Earl's proposal is either necessary or practical. The Secretary of State cannot be expected to intervene in each and every case in which such a dispute arises. Further, such a power might encourage authorities to pass over to the Secretary of State the "difficult" cases, or those where a decision might prove controversial or unpopular.

Noble Lords will be aware that, since 1979, all local authorities have administered inter-authority referrals in accordance with an agreement drawn up by the local authority associations. That agreement has operated very effectively on the basis of voluntary co-operation, and deals with the practicalities of referrals and with the procedures for dealing with disputes between authorities. The agreement relates to the position under the Housing Act 1985, and the Government will be asking the associations to review and renew it in the light of this Bill. We are anxious to maintain the principle of a voluntary agreement in this area. It has worked effectively until now. I see no reason why it should not continue to do so.

The power of intervention by the Secretary of State in individual disputes is, I submit, a little too interventionist. I might just tease the noble Earl by saying that I am surprised that he wished to introduce such an interventionist provision. On a more serious note, I hope that I have been able to convince the Committee that the power is unnecessary, given the perfectly adequate voluntary arrangements that are already in place.

The Committee will be aware that Clause 177(6) contains a power for the Secretary of State to direct by order how questions about referrals should be resolved in the event that arrangements under the associations' agreement do not resolve any disputes. So there is a backstop power there in the legislation. But I prefer to rest on the perfectly good agreement that has been between local authorities over the years and rest on my confidence that authorities will continue to act in the way in which they have acted in the past.

With that explanation, I hope that the noble Earl will withdraw his amendment.

Earl Russell

I enjoyed the Minister's teasing about the Secretary of State. I do not disagree with what he said. It was not my serious intention to involve the Secretary of State. I put down that procedure, which was the 17th century one, first, because I thought that the Minister would say what he did say and, secondly, because it provided a probing opportunity for him to say what else should happen instead. That he has done. I am satisfied. I thank him. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 179 agreed to.

Clause 180 agreed to.

Clause 181 [Right to request review of decision]:

[Amendment No. 268ZAC not moved.]

Baroness Hamwee moved Amendment No. 268ZAD:

Page 105, line 30, leave out from ("made") to ("beginning") in line 31 and insert ("within 28 days or such further period as the local housing authority permit").

The noble Baroness said: This amendment is tabled in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Dubs. I was waiting for my noble friend on the last amendment to explain that he had introduced the reference to the Privy Council in order to give the Minister yet one more thing to do in his currently very quiet life.

This amendment seeks to extend the period to request a review from 14 days to 28 days, with discretion for an extension of that period. Clause 181 provides for a review of decisions under a number of clauses in the Bill. I believe that 14 days may be an unnecessarily tight period. There may be a number of occasions—we have just referred to the position when an applicant seeks to avoid a continuation of domestic violence; he may be in a refuge or outside the determining local authority's area; or possibly be in hospital—when the 14-day period in practice might turn out to be too short.

It is important that the process works well. This is the only opportunity for a tenant to appeal against a decision. Indeed, if problems arise from the shortness of the period, the whole review process could be undermined. It is important that an applicant has proper time to seek advice. In the absence of enough time, the decision must be to apply for a review in order to preserve one's rights.

In other situations in the housing area, the length of time is rather longer. In the housing benefit regulations six weeks are given to appeal against an authority determination of entitlement and a further four weeks to appeal against the outcome of an internal appeal and request a hearing by the benefit review board. An application for judicial review of a local authority homelessness decision takes a good deal longer. Under the 1977 Rent Act there are 28 days to appeal to the rent assessment committee; and so on.

Also, it is important that people who do not find English easy or indeed do not find bureaucracy easy should have time to get to grips with the situation and obtain the right advice.

In another place the Minister said that an amendment to this provision would be considered. I do not believe that any further indication has come from the Government since then as to their intentions. I hope that the Minister can give the Committee some further assurance tonight. I beg to move.

Lord Dubs

I support Amendment No. 268ZAD. I am a little puzzled as to where the 14-day period came from. Perhaps the Minister will reveal that he unearthed it from earlier legislation or that it is a new discovery. If so, by what process was the 14-day period arrived at? It is too short.

If we are to seek to give people a sense that their rights are being protected, they must be given enough time to deal with the situation. I cannot see any advantage in rushing people into responding quickly when there may be language difficulties with the notification from the council or people may be ill and so forth. It is completely unreasonable and against the concept of having an internal review of a decision by a local authority that the request for the review should have to be put in so quickly. It is perverse and, if it did not come from earlier legislation, it must be a mistake. I hope that the Minister will feel able to rectify it.

9.15 p.m.

Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish

Amendment No. 268ZAD seeks to extend the time during which a request for a review must be made from 14 to 28 days after an applicant is notified of an authority's decision.

When the matter was raised in another place by the honourable Member for Christchurch, my right honourable friend agreed to reflect on the period in the light of similar periods of notice in other matters of housing law. We have now considered the period of notice and, on reflection, have concluded that 14 days is a reasonable period in which to allow a homeless applicant to decide whether he wishes to appeal a decision. I cannot offer the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, an explanation as to where the I4-day period came from other than to say that around the same amount of time has elapsed since we began considering this Bill in Committee. I realise that that may not be a good reason for using 14 days.

A longer period might be justified if an applicant needed to weigh up the risk of any costs incurred, or were he to need time to prepare a case. However, no such considerations apply here. Lengthening the time during which an applicant can seek a review would merely increase the period of uncertainty for both the applicant and the local authority. We are providing that the applicant is notified of his right of appeal, and 14 days should be sufficient for him to lodge a simple application for a review; he does not have to give full grounds at that stage.

Those two points are important. The applicant does not risk costs being incurred and does not need time to prepare his case. From that point of view a shortish period is probably wise in order to get the review under way. We are talking of issues that may have a sense of urgency attached to them—or should have if someone is seeking to be considered under the homelessness legislation.

If subsequently new evidence comes to light which may have led the authority to reach a different decision, it is open to the applicant to draw that to the attention of the authority by means of a new application. Therefore 14 days is a reasonable period of notice and is consistent with other matters in the Housing Bill. A request for a review does not require a great deal of thought. The applicant will either be satisfied that he has been considered and rejected or will not be pleased. He will realise that he has nowhere else to turn and will have to ask for a review. He does not need more than 14 days to bring that about. In such cases the faster the case is resolved, the better. I hope that with that information the noble Baroness will withdraw her amendment.

Baroness Hamwee

The Minister says that by extending the period, the period of uncertainty will be extended. I accept that in relation to the local housing authority. But if an applicant wants to extend the uncertainty for himself, then he should have the scope to do so. After all, he could end that uncertainty by applying for a review within 24 hours on the basis of what the Minister says.

Also, it would be unfortunate if having so short a period means that applicants are tempted to apply for a review without preparing their case or working out the reasons, thus leading to a greater workload for the local housing authority and for CABs and so forth which may be assisting.

The Minister implicitly, but perhaps not explicitly, commented on the second part of the amendment, which is to allow a local authority discretion to extend the period. Can he say whether there is any inherent objection to that? That may help both parties to deal with procedural matters rather more smoothly. Perhaps I may also ask him to confirm that the applicant has only to request a review within the time limit. I am not sure within what period the case has to be put. I should be grateful if the Minister could assist me on that point, or perhaps it is a matter for regulations.

Lord Dubs

Before the Minister answers, perhaps I may comment a little further. This may not be the most significant amendment of the whole of the Committee stage but it seems to me that the Minister is being extremely reluctant to meet the arguments that we have been putting forward. On a number of occasions during the Committee stage of the Bill—or perhaps it was the Report stage of the Asylum and Immigration Bill: one becomes a little confused these days—the Minister has prided himself on account of his constituency surgery experiences in the days when he was in the other place and represented a constituency. I put it to him that some of the people who are turned down for consideration under the homelessness arrangements by a local authority are likely to want to get some advice. They may say that they will consult their local councillor; they may say that they will consult their Member of Parliament. Each of those processes may take a little time. They may say that they want to consult their brother, their uncle or their father. In all those instances—those are perfectly reasonable things for people to want to do—time will go by and people may miss the opportunity.

Had these provisions been in place some years ago I could visualise people coming to my constituency surgery and saying, "I have had this letter from the town hall. What do I do about it?", by which point they might well have missed the date. The Minister is being unreasonable. We do not live in a world where all people efficiently deal by return of post with every communication that they receive. We do not live in a world where every individual knows exactly the significance of a communication from a local authority. The Minister will know that from his constituency days. I certainly remember it and anyone who has served on a local authority would also know that.

The Minister is being quite unreasonable and I think that a concession on this point would reflect the reality and the knowledge that individuals sometimes, for reasons beyond their direct control, need a little time to consider the implications of a communication from a local authority.

Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish

Given the sweetness and light we have had since the supper break, I am sorry to act as something of a block on that at this point and over what on the face of it does not seem to be very much. We have to remember what we are talking about. We are talking about someone putting in an application to the local authority. In all the hours of debate, noble Lords have said that for many people this is a traumatic experience which is very serious for them. I entirely agree with that. However, I really do not think that the answer to the question "Will you consider me under the homelessness legislation?" is the kind of matter one puts behind the clock on the mantelpiece and forgets for a week or two. I really do think that one would do something about it fairly quickly. I am not sure that it is imposing a great burden to suggest that it has to be done within 14 days. I should have thought that on a matter of this seriousness 14 days is quite a long time to give people the chance to take any advice they want in deciding what they are going to do.

Lord Northbourne

Does the noble Lord accept that many people in this country now do not speak English? I am thinking particularly of the Bangladeshi community. At Toynbee Hall, with which I am involved, we provide a free legal service, but the lawyers come only once a week. It would be so easy for 14 days to slip by under those circumstances without the person even understanding possibly what the letter was saying.

Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish

I am not sure that I can accept that. One assumes that the application has been made in a language which the officials understand. I am not sure that we should go overboard in consideration of the fact that there may be a person somewhere with that kind of problem. I hope that there are not a lot of people in this country who cannot speak English because that would be a very serious position.

Lord Northbourne

There are first generation immigrants.

Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish

My definition of a "lot of people", in a population of 55 million, is many hundreds of thousands of people. It is a reflection on our education system if they do not speak English. If one is going to live in a country it is quite important at least to be able to find one's way around the language as quickly as possible. That is something of an aside. I want to make some progress on this matter in relation to the generality of cases.

I have tried to suggest that in such a situation 14 days is reasonable. I believe I was asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, how long it takes for a case to be decided. That is at the discretion of the local authority itself. If a person applies and later says that he is going to appeal and will return with the grounds of appeal, a certain amount of time is available. I come back to my point that if the homelessness position is as serious as I have been told it is throughout the day, the person concerned is not going to leave the letter on the mantelpiece for long. But in order to allow progress, perhaps I may do what my right honourable friend in the other place did and say that I shall reflect on the points that have been made to me and consider whether we should extend the period to 28 days.

Earl Russell

The Minister is quintessentially a reasonable man. For that reason he does not quite understand the way shock may affect some people whose reason, if I may so put it, is somewhat less Spartan than that of the Minister himself. There are many people who, faced with a really vital shock, go into something of a fugue and put the letter on the mantelpiece and, very much in the manner of the ostrich, hope that the thing will go away if they do not look at it. I have known that to happen among pupils and friends many times. It is a well-known phenomenon. If the Minister believes that it does not happen then his experience is very different from mine.

I agree strongly with the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, about people who do not speak English. I do not believe that that is necessarily a reflection on our education system. Some of the people have been here for a short period of time; some have had interrupted schooling, perhaps because of homelessness, as we said earlier today. I remember meeting some of them when I was a child in another part of the United Kingdom. Their native language in which they were fluent was Welsh.

Baroness Hollis of Heigham

There is another point which may be helpful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, if it is re-emphasised. The Minister speaks all the time as though we are dealing with people who are homeless and effectively roofless. Therefore, not only will they be unable to respond within the 14 days, but possibly they may not have a mantelpiece on which to put the letter. Throughout this Bill we are talking about people who are threatened with homelessness as well as those who are homeless. If one is threatened with homelessness one may be trying to negotiate with a landlord. There may be a question about a pending court case. One may be dealing with arrears and the rest. To seek also to cope with a local authority situation within 14 days may be too much.

I do not understand why the Government are resisting this amendment. I understand that for every 100 amendments which the Opposition may bring forward, the Government may resist about 85 of them because they are ideologically unacceptable or cost too much money. But there is a whole raft of amendments, which may amount to 10 per 100, which matter not an iota to the substance of the Bill and in which there is no macho element involved. There is no need to resist them. They are amendments in which the Opposition Benches have made a real point. But in this case it is too tight a timetable, particularly for those threatened with homelessness who are trying to avert it. It costs the Government absolutely nothing at all to concede the point that in all fairness 28 days (or some other appropriate time) is more reasonable. There is no reason on this earth for the Government to dig in their heels and to resist the amendment just for the sake of it. May I invite the Minister to take it away and then come back and meet us on this point?

9.30 p.m.

Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish

I am tempted to change my mind from the offer that I made three or four minutes ago which I thought might conclude the debate. I am not entirely sure what the noble Baroness was getting at when she said she thought that I was assuming that people were roofless. I know that they are not because I have given the statistics on that previously. The vast majority will still have a mantlepiece on which to put the letter.

Although I am puzzled about why in an urgent situation people should be given 28 days instead of 14 in which to get a review under way on the question of whether the local authority has made a mistake in trying to establish whether or not they are homeless, I have given a commitment that I shall take the matter away and reflect on it. Despite the efforts of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, I shall not go any further than that now.

Baroness Hamwee

In thanking the Minister for his offer to reflect further, may I ask him to reflect on two further points? I am not asking him to respond to them now. First, if the timetable for proceeding with the review and for considering the case and the evidence, if I may put it that way, is within the discretion of the local authority, there should be no objection to allowing a local authority to give an applicant more than 14 days in which to start the review process.

Secondly, going beyond the comments made by my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, may I suggest that an applicant who receives a letter which states something like, "Council X has considered your application and determined to notify another local housing authority pursuant to Section 177 of the Housing Act 1966", might well think that that is good news, not bad news? In other words, there is plenty of scope for bureaucracy. A later clause suggests that an authority has a duty to explain those provisions in ordinary language. When we reach that clause I shall ask the Minister whether he can tell me why only one matter is singled out for explanation in ordinary language. Every matter should be dealt with in that way. Does the Minister want to intervene?

Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish

No.

Baroness Hamwee

Having made those points and having been assured that the Minister will take them on board without responding now, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 181 agreed to.

Lord Dubs moved Amendment No. 268ZAE: After Clause 181, insert the following new clause—

RIGHT TO APPEAL

(" .—(1) An applicant notified by a local housing authority under section 164 above of their decision—

1. (a) that he is homeless or threatened with homelessness,
2. (b) whether he has a priority need,
3. (c) whether he became homeless or threatened with homelessness intentionally and whether they have notified or propose to notify another local housing authority under section 179, or
4. (d) that suitable alternative accommodation is available in their district under section 176,

may within 21 days of notification appeal to the county court.

(2) On an appeal the court shall consider—

1. (a) whether the decision by the local housing authority was made in accordance with the law;
2. (b) any finding of fact by the local housing authority as to the circumstances of the applicant's homelessness, whether as a result of the authority's inquiries under section 164 or otherwise; and
3. (c) any fact relied upon by the applicant and set out in the applicant's grounds of appeal.

(3) On an appeal the court may make such order either confirming, quashing or varying the decision of the local authority as it thinks fit.").

The noble Lord said: A local authority has a number of possible different reasons for refusing to treat an individual as homeless or as threatened with homelessness. Those reasons might include a decision that the individual is not in the category of having priority need. The individual might be regarded as having made himself homeless intentionally or it might be that the individual has suitable alternative accommodation in the eyes of the local authority. What powers does the individual have to challenge local authority decisions?

An individual could ask for a review of the decision, as we have just discussed. However, although we have just spent some time trying to improve things, the review is likely to be carried out by the same local authority officer who made the original decision to exclude that individual from the homelessness provisions.

There is a requirement for a better method of appeal than simply an internal review. That is why this amendment is important. Apart from the internal review, the only choice open to an individual is to go for judicial review. However, judicial review has far more to do with the way in which the particular decision is reached than the outcome. It may well be that the individual will win a judicial review hearing. The local authority may be asked to reconsider the case, and it may reconsider it by using more appropriate methods than before but still arrive at the same decision.

For most individuals judicial review is an expensive, clumsy, slow and difficult process. I am sure that the Government do not wish to create a situation where more people feel obliged to have recourse to judicial review. That is where this amendment comes in. The amendment provides that a right of appeal against a homelessness decision by the local authority can lie to the county court. The county court can reverse the decision reached by the local authority. The county court is a much more appropriate way of doing it. It is less costly, quicker and more local than the High Court which at present conducts judicial review hearings. It is generally regarded as a more appropriate venue for such an appeal.

I believe that this amendment will move matters forward and may save the Government money. It depends upon the individual's entitlement to legal aid. It may well be that because of the simpler county court procedures public money will be saved. It may not be government money but local authority money. However, the process would be more cost-effective in terms of public money. It would certainly be more user friendly. The right of appeal to a county court also has the advantage of having been recently recommended by the Law Commission. I believe that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, is preparing his final report on his review of the civil justice system. It is believed that that report will recommend a new route of appeal to the county court in homelessness cases.

The county court process is quicker and more effective than judicial review. To give an individual the right of recourse to the county court will provide that essential final safeguard against a decision to refuse to consider him under the homelessness provisions. This is not a light matter; for the individual it can be a very significant and serious decision. That is why this amendment incorporates a proper and effective method of appeal against such a decision if it is adverse to the claimant. I beg to move.

Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish

Clause 181 provides a means of redress, following the 14 days—perhaps, on reflection, it may be 28 days—in which the individual has the right to appeal. The clause introduces a new responsibility on local authorities to establish a procedure for reviewing decisions that they make in discharge of their duties under the homelessness legislation. It is a form of internal appeals procedure. We certainly do not recommend that the review be carried out by the same official who reached the original decision. It should be conducted at a different level within the authority, perhaps by a senior officer or officers or even by councillors. We intend to cover that matter in our guidance when it comes out. That review procedure will cover all of the main areas in which the applicant has a substantive right.

In considering this amendment, we must bear in mind also the other remedies. My right honourable friend in another place touched on these matters. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, mentioned the possibility of judicial review, although I fully appreciate that is very much a back-stop.

We have to bear in mind the scope for vexatious or speculative appeals which could be caused by too wide a right of appeal, and I do not think that that would be in anyone's interest. However, I have some sympathy with the case put forward by the noble Lord. If he were prepared to withdraw his amendment, I would like to reflect further on what he said, bearing in mind the burden on the courts and the potential for unnecessary appeals. Depending on the outcome of this consideration, I may consider bringing forward alternative provisions at a later stage.

We are very much alive to the issues which the noble Lord has raised this evening. They are receiving our active consideration. I hope on that basis, having made his points, the noble Lord can withdraw his amendment.

Lord Dubs

The spirit of harmony is washing all over us. I appreciate what the Minister has said and, of course, I look forward with interest and enthusiasm to the outcome of his deliberations on this matter. In the meantime, I thank him and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Dean of Harptree)

I should inform the Committee that if Amendment No. 268ZAEA is agreed to I cannot call Amendment No. 268ZAF.

[Amendments Nos. 268ZAEA and 268ZAF not moved.]

Clause 182 agreed to.

Clause 183 [Suitability of accommodation]:

Baroness Hamwee moved Amendment No. 268ZAG:

Page 107, line 6, leave out from ("to") to end of line 7 and insert ("Parts VI, IX, X and XI of the Housing Act 1985 (repair notices; slum clearance; overcrowding; houses in multiple occupation)").

The noble Baroness said: Amendment No. 268ZAG stands in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis of Heigham. I hope this is a straightforward amendment. Its purpose is to require the local authority to have regard not only to those matters which fall within the parts of the Housing Act 1985 listed in the Bill—slum clearance, overcrowding, houses in multiple occupation—but also to repair notices when they assess the suitability of accommodation.

Part VI of the 1985 Act provides powers for local authorities to tackle disrepair. It deals with properties which are in such a state of disrepair as to make them unfit for human habitation and with properties which are in substantial disrepair but not unfit, as the term is defined.

We debated earlier in Committee the problems arising from the poor condition of housing in certain parts of the private sector. We have debated the need, as we see it, for a national licensing scheme for houses in multiple occupation and the effect that poor quality accommodation has on matters such as health, children's education and so on.

The extent of disrepair is not something with which any of us can feel comfortable. Nor can we feel comfortable knowing that a very human and understandable attitude on the part of the tenant is that he does not want to make a fuss because he might upset the landlord and be turned out of his property as a result. I understand that about three-quarters of landlords say that their properties are not inspected before homeless households move in. That does not surprise me. But it is important that a local housing authority should have regard to the state of repair as well as the matters listed in Clause 183(1).

Anticipating that the Minister may refer to the regulation-making power under Clause 183(2), I wonder whether I may take this opportunity to ask him when an order may be published for consultation—I assume there will be consultation—and when an order may be implemented, as it is important that there is certainty when the primary legislation comes into effect. I beg to move.

9.45 p.m.

Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish

We now turn to the definition of "suitable" accommodation for the purposes of this part of the Bill. The provision we are now discussing ensures that where functions are being discharged under the homelessness legislation the accommodation to be provided is suitable. I have referred to Clause 183 on a number of occasions during the course of the day when the word "suitable" has fallen to be discussed. Perhaps I may restate what Clause 183 seeks to do.

Apart from the new order-making power to which I shall refer in a minute, Clause 183 re-enacts provisions contained in Section 69 of the Housing Act 1985.

The Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977 did not contain express provisions as to suitability of accommodation. We introduced that concept in the Housing and Planning Act 1986 (following the 1985 judgment in the case of Puhlhofer). The intention was to strengthen the homelessness provisions by setting out the factors that authorities should take into account in determining whether accommodation is suitable. The Housing and Planning Act 1986 amended Section 69 of the Housing Act 1985 to require authorities to have regard to the parts of that Act which deal with slum clearance, overcrowding and houses in multiple occupation. It was not then thought necessary to extend "suitability" to encompass repair notices, and given that the state of the housing stock has since improved, I do not think we need it now.

The new order-making power which we are taking in Clause 183 will allow the Secretary of State to specify, first, circumstances in which accommodation is or is not to be regarded as suitable for someone; and, secondly, matters which are to be taken into account or disregarded in determining whether accommodation is suitable for someone. Those powers will provide an important safeguard for homeless people and, if it proves necessary, we shall not hesitate to use them to extend further the definition of the term "suitable".

Amendment No. 268ZAG seeks to extend the existing provisions by ensuring that they refer to statutory provisions on the repair of the property and its fitness for habitation.

Although I appreciate that the noble Baroness is concerned about the interpretation that some authorities might give to the term "suitable accommodation", I believe that her fears are largely unfounded. In general, I am sure that we would want authorities to take account of the state of repair and fitness of the property.

The duty of authorities to secure suitable accommodation for households to whom they owe a duty under the homelessness legislation is not qualified by the availability of stock, and to impose too many restrictions on the stock they may use could present them with serious problems. We would not, in general, expect an authority to use accommodation that is subject to a repair notice for the discharge of its functions, although there could be cases where that might be a temporary expedient, either until repairs are effected or until something more suitable becomes available.

The current Homelessness Code of Guidance does not address the question of suitability in relation to accommodation used in the discharge of duty to any great extent; we shall consider what more needs to be said when we revise it, and in doing so will take note of the remarks made by the noble Baroness. I doubt that we need specific reference to the requirements of Part VI of the 1985 Act. If clear problems emerge about the way in which authorities are discharging their new duty, the option of an order under Clause 183 remains available.

As to when the order under Clause 183 will see the light of day, any order under the clause would have to be in place when the legislation commences. We shall discuss the possible content with interested parties over the summer before finalising anything. It will not be a formal consultation, but it will be a discussion with those interested. I hope that with that explanation and assurance the noble Baroness can withdraw the amendment.

Baroness Hamwee

I thank the Minister for that response. Without trading statistics about housing conditions, perhaps I may remind him that my amendment would require a local housing authority only to have regard to Part VI. In other words, can the Minister have regard to the fact that I want it only to have regard to that part? That appeared to be precisely what he was saying when he explained that he would expect local housing authorities to take condition into account. Therefore, I am going no further than wanting the point to be made clear on the face of the Bill.

Having said that, and looking forward to the consultation on the order on suitability, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Lord Northbourne moved Amendment No. 268A:

Page 107, line 7, at end insert— ("( ) In determining for the purposes of this Part whether accommodation is suitable for a person to occupy with a dependent child or children under the age of 11, the local housing authority shall have regard to—

1. (a) the suitability of that accommodation for a family with young children and for the upbringing of children under safe and hygienic conditions: and
2. (b) the availability of safe areas in which young children can play both indoors and outdoors,

and shall ensure that the accommodation is suitably located to avoid disruption to the schooling of the child or children.").

The noble Lord said: In moving Amendment No. 268A, I shall speak also to Amendment No. 268B. Recently there has been a lot of good research which, at considerable expense to the taxpayers, shows us what any intelligent person would have known in the first place; namely, that unsatisfactory bed-and-breakfast accommodation is seriously damaging to families and young children. It affects health, creates stress and can often lead to family break up. Children need a safe place to play, a settled school life, friends, normal socialisation and security.

A recent Barnardos report states: Minimum standards prescribing the type and quality of temporary accommodation should be established. The focus should be on providing a safe, secure and healthy environment for children. In particular, the standards should address: access to personal washing and toilet facilities, access to cooking and laundry facilities, including the storage of food, access to play space for children".

Many good local authorities are doing an extremely good job in this respect and take their responsibilities very seriously. But voluntary organisations state that there are a significant number of local authorities which are not and which are using bed-and-breakfast accommodation of an inadequate and unsatisfactory quality as a dump for homeless people. All the amendment is designed to do is to bring the standard of all local authorities up to the standard of the best. If the Minister cannot accept the amendment in this form, it would be helpful if he could tell the Committee how that obviously desirable objective could be achieved.

Amendment No. 268B relates to young people leaving care. Approximately 10,000 young people leave care each year. Sixty per cent. of young people leaving care are 16 or 17 years old, whereas the average age of young people leaving home is 20 to 22. Therefore, they are an especially vulnerable group. Furthermore, they have not had the support of a normal family background and sometimes have not been adequately prepared to move out into the world.

Centrepoint's current statistics show that 28 per cent. of young homeless people have been in care. Statistics from agencies outside London—in particular, in a report on Hull—show that 40 per cent. of young people come from care. Yet the population who have been in care represents less than 1 per cent. of the total. Often young people coming out of care need support and encouragement; perhaps a little friendly pressure sometimes to get out of bed in the morning, to settle down, seek a job and look for training. They need someone to replace the family which they do not have.

Section 72 of the Housing Act 1985 requires local authority housing departments to co-operate with each other in discharging their functions relating to homelessness and threatened homelessness. It also requires social services authorities to co-operate with housing authorities in relation to those provisions. However, it does not place a reciprocal duty on housing authorities to respond to requests from social services departments that accommodation be secured for their clients. The experience of the Children's Society shows that too often that co-operation does not exist.

A recent Department of Health research study found that housing departments did not always take account of the housing needs of care leavers even when representations were made by their local social services departments.

The purpose of the amendment is to draw attention to the fact that such young people not only need priority access to accommodation but may also need a certain amount of care and support. That kind of care and support is provided by the Foyer Federation for Youth, by hostels and by other voluntary organisations which sometimes accommodate such young people in flats or houses, guaranteeing the rent in return for the young person entering into a contract in relation to his behaviour. Such organisations gradually wean those young people from a dependence on the children's home and enable them to take on the responsibilities of life in the community. The object of the amendment is to draw attention to the importance of this issue. I shall listen with interest to the Minister's response. I beg to move.

Baroness Hollis of Heigham

We support the amendment warmly from these Benches. The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, has proposed very persuasively a pair of amendments which focus on both younger children and youngsters coming out of care who are some of the most vulnerable people faced with homelessness. For example, something like 49 per cent. of those the Salvation Army found engaged in prostitution had come out of care. We know that many involved in begging have come out of care. That is often because the arrangements for those coming out of care into independent accommodation have not been managed properly by the local authorities. We should support any provision which will ensure that the various agencies work together to enable those young people to enjoy a free and independent life and no longer to be at risk. I hope that the Minister will be able to support, or give a version of support, to the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne.

Baroness Fisher of Rednal

I add my support for the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne. I am involved with perhaps the largest charity in Birmingham which has been in existence for 25 years; namely, St. Basil's scheme for the young homeless. It caters for a large percentage—one-third—of people coming out of care. As the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, said, those children are extremely vulnerable because they have no one to whom they can turn. That is why they have been in care. When they come out of care there is no one to help them. If they are on the streets, that creates a very serious and stressful problem which may have serious effects later on in life.

I seek an assurance from the Minister in relation to those organisations. Last year St. Basil's had 3,000 applications and was able to accept only 125. Young people are with us for roughly 18 months during which time we give them the necessary training in order to take up employment. In Birmingham we are extremely fortunate that the local authority and social services departments work with us closely and with the housing department. In many cases, accommodation is found for the young people. I seek an assurance that that good and effective practice which is taking place is in Birmingham is able to continue so that after the Bill becomes law we can carry on with what we consider is a very important job for young people.

Baroness Hamwee

My name is to one of the amendments but from these Benches I wish to support both. The noble Lord drew our attention to a detailed matter which could have been regarded as falling in part within the thrust of my last amendment. He is right to draw to the Committee's attention the issues concerning children and young people. We may hear that it is yet another matter for a regulation-making power, but assistance and support from the Government would be helpful on the issue.

10 p.m.

Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish

The two amendments seek to extend the provisions for determining whether accommodation is suitable. I mentioned in the previous debate that we have taken powers in Clause 183 to prescribe when and how accommodation is to be regarded as suitable. My right honourable friend the Minister for Housing has indicated in another place that we shall, if necessary, use the powers to extend further the definition of the term "suitable".

The first amendment would introduce new tests to determine whether accommodation is suitable for a family with young children. I share the noble Lord's belief that all authorities should aim to provide the type of accommodation he describes. However, I ask the Committee to consider whether it is best achieved through legislation.

The noble Lord's amendment would restrict the type of accommodation which an authority could use to discharge its duty. The authority may be limited as to the type of accommodation it could provide and would be unable to look to accommodation outside a particular area. Such a degree of prescription might leave some authorities, particularly those in areas with a limited supply of accommodation accessible to children's existing schools, unable to discharge their duties. A difficult balance may have come into play here between our desire that the children should be accommodated and homeless persons should get a house to tide them over and our desire that the house should be as suitable as possible. To be too prescriptive about the degree of suitability could reduce the number of houses available for those families who are homeless or about to become homeless.

I remind the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, that the Homelessness Code of Guidance refers to the necessity to take account of the household's needs, including access to schools. I assure him that we will continue to reflect that when we revise the code.

The noble Lord mentioned bed-and-breakfast accommodation. I fully agree that it is not suitable for families, except for short-term reception purposes. I am sure that he will be pleased to hear that the use of bed-and-breakfast accommodation has decreased to one-third of the level in September 1991. It now accounts for only about 10 per cent. of all interim accommodation under present legislation. I emphasise the word "interim" because it is the most temporary form of help which the local authority provides. I hope the explanation meets the noble Lord's concern and that he will feel able, having rehearsed the problem which we all appreciate, to withdraw his amendment.

Amendment No. 268B would require the authority to take into account the welfare needs of a young person leaving local authority care when assessing whether accommodation is suitable. I am not sure whether the noble Lord has in mind the quality of the accommodation or whether he has a more general concern about the availability of support for young people in need.

I share the noble Lord's concern that young people in need should have proper access to the care and support they require. The noble Baroness, Lady Fisher, underlined the point quite rightly. However, I do not believe that the availability or absence of such support should be grounds for deciding whether to offer a particular property to an applicant. I suspect that it is the other side of the problem that concerns the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne—that perhaps without the necessary care and support a young person may be unable to sustain a tenancy which he secured under the new duty. Such decisions are best left to social services departments, which have the expertise in making such assessments. It would be wholly inappropriate to expect a housing department to make judgments about a young person's care needs. If a housing department believes that an applicant is in need of care, it has the power, under Clause 185, to call on the assistance of a social services department.

The Children Act 1989 makes provision to ensure that support continues for young people leaving local authority care. Section 24 of that Act requires social services authorities to advise, assist and befriend young people when they leave their care. A social services authority may, under Section 27 of that Act, call on the assistance of a housing authority in discharging its duty to that young person; if a request is made, the housing authority is under a duty to comply.

The statutory framework for co-operation between housing and social services departments is already in place. What is needed is the means of making it work. What we are talking about here is the need for a proper partnership between the two functions. As I have remarked before in Committee, the existing Homelessness Code of Guidance was drawn up before the Children Act was fully in operation. I believe that I read out one of the paragraphs which to some extent anticipated the Children Act, referring to the Act about to come into effect. Now that the Act is in force and fully operational, we have several years' experience to draw on. We shall ensure that authorities have fresh guidance on how to operate in the context of the new legislation.

It is right that I should mention two aspects drawn to our attention in particular by the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne. He mentioned foyers. The Government agree that they can be a valuable means of providing accommodation and training opportunities for young people under one roof. The Government have supported generously the development of several foyers, not least under the rough sleepers initiative in central London. Foyers have also been successful in obtaining Exchequer funds from the single regeneration budget. We see them as a useful development, as the noble Lord mentioned.

The noble Baroness, Lady Fisher of Rednal, mentioned St. Basil's in Birmingham. Again, we are aware of the good work done by St. Basil's in Birmingham. The Department of the Environment pays a grant to St. Basil's as well as to some 150 other voluntary sector organisations throughout England to allow them to continue with their work of relieving homelessness—among single homeless people in the case of St. Basil's in Birmingham. I see no reason why St. Basil's would not continue its work under the new regime for which the Bill provides.

With those reassurances on two important matters, which I much appreciate, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

Lord Northbourne

As always, we come back to the problem that we have not seen the guidance. As usual, we are being asked to sign a blank cheque. I do not know what to say. I accept the noble Lord's assurance, but so much may or may not be stated in the guidance which will make a great difference as to whether matters that we have been discussing will or will not be accomplished. I can only accept the noble Lord's assurance and hope to see the guidance, or to have an opportunity to comment on the draft when it arises.

Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish

Perhaps I can assist the noble Lord at least to a small extent. I recall reading out at least one paragraph and pointing out that there were a number of paragraphs in the current guidance on the subject of children. Perhaps I may suggest that the noble Lord casts his eye over the current guidance. It was written just as the Children Act was coming in and will, therefore, need to be considerably updated in that regard. He will see the basis on which we are likely to continue our work on guidance.

Baroness Fisher of Rednal

Before the noble Lord sits down perhaps I may intervene with a few words. I said that good practice is being operated by the city council in Birmingham with the housing department, social services and St. Basil's. I simply seek assurance that such practice will still be allowed under the provisions of the Bill.

Lord Northbourne

Continuing my dissertation, I return to the point that some local authorities are doing brilliantly. It is the dogs, those that are not making it, which are the problem. I shall take the amendment away and think about it. My reason for wanting to insert the provisions of Amendment No. 268A was precisely to force those local authorities that are not doing their job to jolly well get off their backsides and do it and to find the money to do it somehow. If we do not force them to do it, central government seem powerless to influence them and get results. However, I shall take careful note of the noble Lord's remarks. I beg leave, for the time being, to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Amendment No. 268B not moved.]

Baroness Hollis of Heigham moved Amendment No. 268BA:

Page 107, line 7, at end insert— ("( ) Accommodation is not suitable unless it is at a rent which the applicant can afford, either from his own resources or with the benefit of such public assistance as is likely to be available to him.").

The noble Baroness said: This amendment, standing also in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, seeks to establish on the face of the Bill, and not merely by the blank cheque of guidance—in which the Minister just asked the Committee to place such trust—that accommodation is not regarded as suitable for a homeless person for the purposes of this legislation if the person cannot afford the rent. In other words, part of the definition of accommodation being "suitable" is that it is affordable. Otherwise, it is not suitable.

The Government propose that local authorities will use the private rented sector extensively for homeless families while they are waiting their time on the housing register for permanent social housing. The trouble is, private rented housing is ill-suited to the needs of many homeless families. It is often of poor quality and may add, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said, to problems of poor health or disability. The worst problems of disrepair are to be found in the private rented sector. Energy and insulation costs are likely to be high, and fuel debts are likely to mount. Equally, private rented housing can often be quite small and unsuitable for larger families. It is also insecure. A shorthold tenancy lasts for only six months; therefore a family placed in the private rented sector can have no confidence that it will be there in a few months' time.

We know from all the research that the DoE itself has commissioned from Peter Kemp and others at the University of York that private landlords do not like letting to homeless families, families on housing benefit or families with children. They will let to them only if they cannot let to the people to whom they wish to let; namely, childless couples in work. Therefore, such families will very often end up with accommodation that the private landlord can rent to no one else.

Above all, private rented housing, as we know, is expensive. The average local authority rent for a two-bedroomed flat in 1993 was £39. The same accommodation in the private rented sector was £72 a week, or 85 per cent. higher. In London, it ran to over £100 a week, more than twice as much.

When we discussed this matter earlier, the Minister agreed that the insecurity, unsuitability and cost of private rented housing were among the major causes of homelessness. Something like one-fifth of all homeless families are homeless because they have been evicted from the private rented sector. The usual reasons for their eviction are that they cannot afford to pay the rent or the housing benefit does not arrive on time. Yet under the Bill homeless families will be sent back into the self-same rented sector from which they were made homeless in the first place. Unless the accommodation is more suitable this time round, the homeless will again be evicted and will again become roofless—endlessly churned, endlessly the revolving door.

If we are to avoid that churning, as I am sure the Minister wishes to do, it is essential that homeless families are placed in a private rented property that is suitable. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said, it must be in decent physical repair. But it must also be accessible, as argued earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Swinfen; and it must also be affordable.

Yet even before the changes in housing benefit regulations this year, housing benefit for homeless families—80 per cent. of homeless families are on housing benefit—only covered the full rent in something like 60 per cent. of the tenancies. In the rest, if they wanted to stay in the private rented sector, families had to top slice their income support, which should have gone on food or clothing, to pay for rent. The housing benefit changes which the Government introduced in January have made that situation much worse.

Let me give just one example from the CAB in Cheshire. A homeless couple with a child had their house repossessed and were in temporary rented accommodation. The rent was £84 a week. Housing benefit until January covered £72 a week and they had to find £12 of that out of their income support. Following the Government's capping of housing benefit in January, housing benefit fell to £55 a week—to meet a rent of £84. The difference of nearly £30 a week had to come out of a total income from income support of just £80 a week, leaving a family of three with just £50 a week on which to live. They could not; they did not; and they became homeless. I repeat, 80 per cent. of homeless families are on housing benefit and are likely to face that situation.

What happens if they cannot pay the extra rent out of income support, which was never intended for rent but for food and clothing? Perhaps the Minister can tell us. Have they made themselves intentionally homeless? If so, where do they go? If they are unintentionally homeless what do they do next? Do they go to yet another private rented flat and face the risk that they cannot afford to pay the rent?

The Minister in another place on 26th March accepted that it was a problem. We expect the Minister to say nothing less tonight. In the other place, the Minister said that the Government would use regulations to ensure that accommodation that the applicant cannot afford, taking into account any housing benefit to which he is entitled, is not to be regarded as suitable. The Awva judgment of July 1995, already quoted tonight by the noble Earl, Lord Russell, also confirmed that whether the occupant could afford the rent was "a material factor".

I fear that the Minister will say that this will be left to regulations; it will be left to a code of guidance. Given that these clauses of the Bill hinge on the word "suitable" any definition of suitability must be on the face of the Bill and, pivotally for those going into private rented sector accommodation, "suitable" must mean affordable. Then local authorities will know where they stand in the discharge of their duties. They simply cannot hand over a list of addresses and ask the tenants to take pot luck on where they wish to go. It is a protection to tenants; it is a protection to the Government, given that the courts most recently have not exactly supported the Government in relying on regulations to discharge what should have been done in primary legislation.

To avoid a fate that I am sure the Minister will wish to avoid, I hope that we can encourage him to support these amendments tonight. I beg to move.

10.15 p.m.

Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish

This amendment seeks to specify on the face of the Bill that accommodation is not suitable unless it is at a rent which the applicant can afford. We have already considered the issue of affordability in dealing with Amendment No. 264AB from the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, and I agreed that there was probably little difference between us on this point. The difference we have is that we do not agree on the means of achieving the desired result; that is, whether the issue should be addressed on the face of the Bill. As I made clear, we are taking an order-making power under Clause 183, and we firmly believe that the place to address affordability is in an order made under that clause.

During discussion of Amendment No. 264AB, the noble Baroness referred to the supply and availability of accommodation and the difficulties which people may have in securing the right accommodation for themselves. The Committee will be aware that local authorities are making considerable progress towards developing housing supply strategies which use the resources of the private sector, housing associations and other agencies. Indeed, I referred to that at greater length earlier this evening. It is no longer the case that people have to rely on the authority to provide the accommodation.

The noble Baroness suggested that one-fifth of homeless households were evicted from the private rented sector. The suggestion appeared to be that that had something to do with rent. Indeed, one-fifth of households were evicted from the private rented sector, but 80 per cent. became homeless for reasons other than rent arrears; for instance, breakdown of relationships, sharing and so forth. That means that only 20 per cent. are in rent arrears. A small calculation will show that it is not one-fifth of the homeless that are evicted from the private rented sector who are in rent arrears; it is only 2 per cent. who are evicted for rent arrears. The magnitude of the problem is not as great as the noble Baroness implied.

My right honourable friend the Minister for Housing said that affordability was an example of the sort of issue which we were considering using the order-making power to make clear. That is exactly the position I maintained in the previous amendment and I maintain it again now. A suggestion made by the noble Baroness was that benefit cuts would affect homelessness. I cannot agree with her. A person who cannot afford the rent on housing benefit—that is, at an average reference rent— will not be intentionally homeless. Accommodation at or above the reference rent will not be suitable. There is now case law in that regard and the question we must ask ourselves is whether we need to reinforce it by regulation.

The issue of affordability therefore is one which is raised irrespective of who provides the accommodation. Homelessness and every other factor must take affordability into account. As I said, we are reflecting on the adequacy of case law on that point and in the light of that will consider precisely how to use the order-making power under Clause 183.

We are clear that if we need to specify further what constitutes affordability, the right place to do that is in an order rather than on the face of the Bill. The great advantage of an order-making power is that one can change it fairly easily if circumstances change. In relation to these matters, circumstances could easily change. Coming back for primary powers does not happen often and, therefore, it is best that matters as detailed as this should be left to regulation. I am not sure that the noble Baroness will agree with me on that, but I suspect that she will not be surprised at the view I have taken. I am sure that she appreciates that we are very much aware of the problem she raises. However, we believe that it is best solved by another route.

Baroness Hollis of Heigham

As the Minister anticipated, I found his answer disappointing. He raised two issues. The first was the route by which one should address the problem and the second was the scale of the problem. With regard to the route, the Minister insists that the right response of the Government is order-making power and therefore they go the route of regulation. I should have thought that that was unwise, given what we have experienced recently. But more substantively, the issue of suitability in all its dimensions is the fulcrum of the whole of what it is reasonable for local authorities to offer to homeless families.

I am sure that the Minister would not dissent from that view. Time and again local authorities have to assure themselves that there is suitable accommodation available for a homeless family. If it is not, they are expected to discharge their responsibilities to homeless families in their own temporary accommodation. Yet the Government are unwilling to define this pivotal word—"suitable"—on the face of the Bill. We are allowed to define categories of people in Clause 148 who can be given reasonable preference; we are allowed to define people who have secure tenancies and who do not have to go through the introductory tenancy route. But when it comes to the word "suitable"—a pivotal word in Section 7—we are not allowed to define it other than by regulation. Why? Because circumstances may change. For instance, the Government may consider that accommodation does not have to be affordable. Is that a circumstance that may change?

The Minister shakes his head. Can he tell me in what way the word "affordable" is likely possibly to change such that he wants the flexibility of order rather than primary legislation? Is he saying that at some point the Government may decide that this is an immaterial factor? Surely not. The Minister has not given one reason why it should not be on the face of the Bill. I accept that regulations have a place for a provision that has numbers in it—money or whatever—which need to be uprated or where the matter is highly technical and may need to be subsequently amended. But the core of this Bill is that homeless families must be offered suitable accommodation. When we have pressed the Minister as to what "suitable" means—whether it is in terms of decent repair, physical access or affordability—he says that the Government will act by regulation in case circumstances change, in case they do not want families to have affordable accommodation, do not think physical access is relevant or do not think decent repair is relevant. That cannot be the case. I am very disappointed by the Minister's response. I do not doubt that we shall seek to come back to this matter. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 183 agreed to.

Clause 184 agreed to.

Clause 185 [Co-operation between relevant housing authorities and bodies]:

[Amendment No. 268BB not moved.]

Clause 185 agreed to.

Clause 186 [False statements, withholding information and failure to disclose change of circumstances]:

On Question, Whether Clause 186 shall stand part of the Bill?

Baroness Hamwee

Perhaps I may take this opportunity to pursue briefly a point I raised earlier regarding the reference in subsection (2) of the clause to an authority explaining to applicants in ordinary language. I very much support the use of ordinary language but I am concerned that, in providing specifically for ordinary language in connection with this duty, a licence is being given to local housing authorities to use opaque language in connection with other matters. Will the Minister give some explanation as to why the Government feel it necessary specifically in this clause to include these words? I accept that the clause deals with the commission of an offence, but to my mind that is not sufficient.

Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish

The noble Baroness is probably right that the reason for the words being in the clause is that it refers to a matter relating to an offence. I should quite like everything to be in ordinary language. When I suggest to parts of my department that we should write things in simpler language I come up against the answer, dare I say it to the noble Baroness, that we have to write it in such a way that the lawyers do not start playing ducks and drakes with it. Perhaps if the lawyers were more understanding and were less keen to go through things with a fine-tooth comb, we would all be able to write a lot of matters, including legislation, in simpler language. However, if the noble Baroness does not mind, I shall write to her about the detailed point she raised.

Clause 186 agreed to.

Clause 187 [Regulations and orders]:

Earl Russell moved Amendment No. 268C:

Page 109, line 27, at end insert ("and shall be subject to approval by resolution of both Houses of Parliament").

The noble Earl said: This is not my usual point. The amendment provides for making the regulation-making power affirmative. My original intention was simply to put down a probing amendment to delete the words in the clause. I was told I had to put down an alternative, which is why the affirmative procedure is there. I was intrigued by the words of Clause 187(1): In this Part 'prescribed' means prescribed by regulations of the Secretary of State".

That is not a form of words with which I am familiar. I am familiar with regulations made by Parliament. The Secretary of State lays regulations. Parliament makes them. The Secretary of State may make orders or on some occasions issue directions and give guidance, as we have already heard. But regulations of the Secretary of State are a new kind of animal: they are a hybrid. I hope that, like mules, they may prove sterile. I beg to move.

Lord Swinfen

The trouble with mules is that they also kick.

10.30 p.m.

Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish

I believe that I am thanking my noble friend Lord Swinfen for his intervention. I came armed for a discussion with the noble Earl on the usual basis on which we discuss these matters. He has taken me aback by changing its nature. I shall resist the temptation to draw historical parallels. The trouble with a certain kind of question is that every time one finds an answer the question is changed. I thought that I had answered the noble Earl this evening but he has changed the question.

I am intrigued by his question. If he says that this is not the normal way in which these things are written, I accept that that is the case. I shall look at the wording of Clause 187(1) and consider the matter he has raised and whyx2014;if it is—it is expressed in a different manner to that normally used for regulations and how they should be dealt with by both Houses. If the noble Earl is content with me writing to him on this interesting question, perhaps we may leave the matter at that.

Earl Russell

I am grateful to the Minister. I hope that the postal strike does not last. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 187 agreed to.

Clause 188 agreed to.

Schedule 14 [Homelessness: consequential amendments]:

[Amendment No. 268CA not moved.]

Schedule 14 agreed to.

Clause 189 [Minor definitions: Part VII]:

Amendment No. 268D not moved.

Clause 189 agreed to.

Clause 190 agreed to.

[Amendments Nos. 269 and 270 not moved.]

Lord Dubs moved Amendment No. 270A: Before Clause 191, insert the following new clause—

DISPOSAL BY LOCAL AUTHORITY OF RESIDENTIAL LEASEHOLD

("A local authority, when disposing of a residential leasehold, shall have a duty, as far as is practicable, to inform the potential purchaser of any proposed maintenance, repair or refurbishment plans affecting the property.").

The noble Lord said: This amendment requires a local authority to provide a potential purchaser of a council house or flat with reasonably full information about any possible charges which might arise in terms of maintenance, repairs and so forth. We are talking about adequate warning before the purchaser may have to pay what would otherwise be unexpected and sometimes quite large bills. That is not an idle fear. Wandsworth Council, of which I have some knowledge and experience, claims the record for having sold more council houses and flats than any other local authority in the country. They are leasehold. Many of the purchasers found themselves very rapidly faced with quite unexpected and large bills for repairs, decoration and maintenance.

Perhaps I may give an example. A man to whom I spoke some time ago had bought a flat in of block of 16. Shortly after purchase—within about six months—he was faced with a bill for the installation of a new lift in the block. From memory I believe that his share of the bill was between £1,000 and £1,500. The fact that the lift would need to be repaired or replaced must have been known to the local authority before it sold the flat, yet the purchaser was given no indication that such a large bill was in the offing or that such large works would be necessary. The man was devastated at being faced with having to pay a large sum of money without any warning. He had not saved any money for that as he did not think that it was necessary.

There was some indication in the small print that if repairs and redecoration were necessary at some point all the owners of flats in the block would have to pay their share, but that is not the same as giving adequate warning. It would be reasonable and would represent good faith with the purchasers of council houses and flats if they were given such information. The amendment is couched in reasonable terms. It states that, where practicable, the local authority should give purchasers such information. I beg to move.

Lord Swinfen

I believe that the old saying, caveat emptor—buyer beware—applies when people purchase property from a local authority. I assume that purchasers will have raised a mortgage on the property, probably from a building society, and I believe that building societies now have a duty to look at the structure of a property which with a flat would include the structure of the block, not just of the flat itself. There is also a duty on the vendor—in this case the local authority—to answer any questions on the structure of the property that are asked by the purchaser or the purchaser's agents. Any purchaser would be wise to have a structural survey of the property undertaken which would discover risks such as those mentioned by the noble Lord.

I understand the noble Lord's point—he does not want purchasers of long leasehold interests suddenly to find themselves with an unexpectedly high maintenance cost very shortly after buying their interest—but what puts them in a different position from that of any other purchaser of any other property?

Lord Lucas

The new clause proposed by the noble Lord seeks to address a problem which concerns us all—that is, people who bought flats from a local authority and whose service charges are now higher than they anticipated or who now have less money coming in than they anticipated and have difficulty in coping. In some cases they cannot sell their property. These problems are not limited to council leaseholders; nor do they affect most council leaseholders. Recent academic research carried out for the DoE suggests that the great majority of council leaseholders see their flat as good value for money.

For the minority who face difficulties, we have proposed our own measures in Clauses 191 and 192 which, subject to the views of Parliament, should go a long way to alleviate their problems and which should make the noble Lord's proposal less necessary. Our clauses give powers for the Secretary of State to issue directions allowing councils and other social landlords to reduce their leaseholders' charges for repairs and improvements and to require them to do so where they will be receiving specific additional funding for a scheme. We went out to consultation on these proposals on 14th June and I have sent copies of our paper to the noble Lord, Lord Williams, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee—or rather, the ever-efficient Anne Hemming has sent them to them. Given our shared concerns, I shall approach the proposal from the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, in a spirit of co-operation. I am sure that he will do the same with ours.

I fully share the noble Lord's desire to give effective protection to leaseholders. However, I do not think that these proposals would be effective, or add anything to the information which is already available to tenants purchasing their flats.

First, the requirement as drafted is open to such general interpretation as to be almost meaningless. An authority might provide very general information that would provide little indication of likely future costs and say that it was not practicable to provide further detail, say, because of uncertainties over future availability of funds. There is no indication in the clause as to what would happen if the landlord failed to give information or gave only very general information.

Secondly, this clause would add little or nothing to the information already available to prospective purchasers. Our research found that 98 per cent. of those buying council flats used qualified conveyancers. It is standard practice for them to ask landlords about service charges, proposed works and other liabilities under the lease. The case history adduced by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs—which I find very surprising—ought to be the kind of matter to come forward at that time. If not, it would give the purchaser an unqualified cause of action against the vendor. Moreover, our 1995 leasehold good practice guide to local authorities advised them to provide more presale information on future liabilities. It is in their interests to do so. They do not want their leaseholders to incur debts to the council that they cannot pay off. That was very much the point raised by my noble friend Lord Swinfen.

For these reasons, I cannot commend the new clause to the Committee and hope that the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, will feel able to withdraw it.

Lord Dubs

I thank the Minister for his response. My understanding is that a number of leaseholders who have bought properties from Wandsworth council have been, and continue to be, dismayed and disconcerted by charges for repairs, refurbishment and service charges. However, Amendment No. 270A does not deal directly with service charges but with other costs. It may be that Wandsworth council is unique, in that as a local authority it has not done as well by its leaseholders as other local authorities. But the welter of complaints continues, and many leaseholders in that area are fed up with the position in which they find themselves. However, if, as the noble Lord has said, Wandsworth is uniquely bad and other local authorities are better, all one can do is accept what he has said.

It seems to me that there is no dispute about the principle underlying Amendment No. 270A. The noble Lord, Lord Swinfen, says that on the basis of caveat emptor the purchaser should be able to find out anyway. That is right. However, there have been occasions when that has not proved possible. All the amendment seeks to do is place an obligation on local authorities to behave properly. I am sure that many do, but not all of them do. There is no dispute as to the desirability of the practice described in the amendment. The dispute appears to arise in relation to the scope of the amendment and whether the other safeguards which apply when people buy properties make an amendment of this kind unnecessary. On the basis of comments by many people to whom I have spoken, there is a need for extra safeguards. If the Minister is not to be persuaded this evening, I have no option but to beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Lord Dubs moved Amendment No.270B:

Before Clause 191, insert the following new clause—

USE. OF CAPITAL RECEIPTS TO REPURCHASE UNMORTGAGEABLE FLATS

(".—(1) Where this section applies a local authority may repurchase a relevant lease from a qualifying tenant at a price not exceeding the value of the lease determined in accordance with subsection (3) below.

(2) This section applies where the relevant lease was granted by the authority not less than three years before the date of the repurchase, and either—

1. (a) within the period of 12 months immediately preceding the date of the assignment or surrender not less than three lending institutions have indicated in writing that they would not be prepared to offer to any person an advance—
   1. (i) secured by a mortgage of the relevant lease for a term of 25 years, and
   2. (ii) of an amount equal to 75 per cent. of the value of the relevant lease determined in accordance with subsection (3) below at a date not more than three months before the date on which the indication is given,
   on grounds relating to the personal or financial status of that person, or the condition of the flat, or
2. (b) the local authority is satisfied that no leading institution would be prepared to offer an advance which meets the conditions specified in paragraph (a).

(3) For the purposes of this section, the value of the relevant lease shall be determined by an approved surveyor on the basis that it is the price which the relevant lease would realise at the date of valuation if sold on the open market by a willing vendor on the following assumptions—

1. (a) that the vendor was selling with vacant possession;
2. (b) that the purchaser was purchasing the relevant lease for the purpose of owner-occupation; and
3. (c) that where any criteria applied by lending institutions for the purpose of assessing mortgage applications relate to the number of storeys in the building or the number of 886 dwellings in the building which are occupied by owners, those criteria are not applicable to the flat demised by the relevant lease or any other flat in the same building.

(4) Credit cover for a credit arrangement entered into in connection with a repurchase to which this section applies may be provided from a capital receipt irrespective of any duty under section 59 (reserved part of capital receipts) of the Local Government and Housing Act 1989 to set aside part of that receipt as provision to meet credit liabilities.

(5) in this section— approved surveyor" means a fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors or of the Incorporated Society of Valuers and Auctioneers who is reasonably believed by the qualifying tenant to have ability in, and experience of, the valuation of dwellings, of the particular kind, and the particular area in question;

• "flat" has the same meaning as in section 183 of the Housing Act 1985;
• "lending institution" means an institution which is an approved lending institution for the purposes of section 156 of the Housing Act 1985:
• "qualifying tenant" means the person to whom the relevant lease was granted or a person who has succeeded to the lessee's interest by virtue of a disposal of a description falling within paragraph (a), (b) or (c) of subsection (1) of section 160 of the Housing Act 1985;
• "relevant lease" means a lease of a flat granted by the authority pursuant to Part V of the Housing Act 1985, or with a consent given by the Secretary of State to local authorities generally under section 32 or 43 of that Act.").

The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendment No.270B. This amendment deals with a different point. I suppose that the words "negative equity" reflect the dilemma faced by many house purchasers up and down the country. This may apply also to those who have purchased long leaseholds from local authorities.

I give a recent example of a particular difficulty described to me by a Wandsworth councillor. There is a council block in which a minority of the tenants have bought their own flats and have thereby become long leaseholders. The remainder of the tenants continue, as before, as council tenants.

Repairs, refurbishment or redecoration need to be carried out to the block. If all the residents had been council tenants, the council could have proceeded with the work, but under the new arrangements there is an obligation on the council to get a contribution towards the cost of repair and refurbishment from the leaseholders. Because the leaseholders are finding it difficult to raise the money, the council has not been able to collect the appropriate sum from the leaseholders, and, therefore, none of the work is taking place. In other words, there is, effectively, a veto from the minority of leaseholders, and that has prevented the council tenants, who in good faith are paying their rents and ought to have the benefit of repairs and refurbishments, from having this work carried out. So an impasse has been reached.

I do not believe that that difficulty is unique to this one block of flats. It is a wider difficulty. I have spent some time trying to think of a way round it. It is not easy. Certainly Amendment No. 270B represents a possible way forward because it would enable a local authority to re-purchase unmortgageable flats so that, for example, the situation which I described could be remedied. A leaseholder who could not contribute to essential refurbishment or other costs and who had a flat that could not be sold because of negative equity, would, under this amendment, be able to ask the local authority to re-purchase the flat on certain conditions, which are clearly specified here. Therefore, the leaseholder would be freed from a burden which he could face, and the council tenants, in the example that I gave, would then be able to have their flats, or the common parts, repaired and refurbished.

I do not put this amendment forward just because of the one example that I described. It has a wide applicability to council tenants who buy their flats and then find themselves in difficulties. The amendment puts forward a number of options as to a way forward, based upon the local authority being allowed to re-purchase, under certain circumstances, unmortgageable flats.

I appreciate that it is a complicated amendment. If there were a simpler way forward I would have put it down, but the problem is a real one. The amendment attempts to find a way out, at least for council tenants who find themselves in difficulties which are normally not of their own making. I beg to move.

10.45 p.m.

Lord Lucas

The proposed new clause seeks to address the same problem, to our mind, as Amendment No. 270A. I gladly repeat that we share the noble Lord's concern for the problems that some council leaseholders face, which we intend to alleviate.

The new clause, in Amendment No. 270B, is based largely on the exchange sale scheme which we introduced last year. That scheme is designed to help leaseholders who bought under the right to buy, who have an urgent need to move and cannot sell their flat because of mortgageability difficulties. It provides a financial concession to local authorities to encourage them to buy back the leaseholder's flat and to sell the leaseholder a more suitable property at a discount. It has only been in operation since July of last year.

The new clause would give a financial concession to local authorities to buy back a flat, but not to sell the occupant an alternative property. Local authorities already have power to buy back if they consider that a priority, given other demands on their resources. We do not consider that there is a case for giving them a financial concession.

As I have just said, we have introduced our own proposals for reducing leaseholders' service charges. These should also make it less likely for people to need to sell their flat. When we can see what impact those proposals have—and when the exchange sale scheme has been in operation for longer—we can consider whether any other steps are needed, including the proposal advanced by the noble Lord. At this stage, however, I cannot commend the new clause, and hope that the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, feels able to withdraw it.

As I said, we see the changes we are introducing in Clauses 191 and 192 as the way we wish to go forward at the moment in enabling councils to reduce charges to leaseholders to alleviate the type of problem the noble Lord illustrated. For the moment we do not believe that we should go down the route he advocates in the amendment.

Lord Dubs

The Minister has said no in as conciliatory manner as possible. I have listened to what he said. I shall reflect upon his words when I have had a chance to study them in Hansard to see whether the comfort he has attempted to bring by way of the Government's other measures to deal with the problems will help in the instances I have described. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Baroness Park of Monmouth moved Amendment No. 270BA:

Before Clause 191, insert the following new clause—

DISPOSAL OF RESIDENTIAL SERVICE PROPERTY

(".—(1) The Secretary of State shall not dispose of any residential property held by him or on his behalf and occupied on 28th November 1995 by persons subject to the provisions of the services acts save in accordance with this section.

(2) Before making any proposal to dispose of any property to which subsection (1) applies the Secretary of State shall consult the occupants of the property to which the proposal relates.

(3) No proposal mentioned in subsection (2) shall have effect unless it is confirmed by order made by statutory instrument and subject to approval by resolution of both Houses of Parliament.

(4) Together with any order made under subsection (3) the Secretary of State shall lay before Parliament a statement giving details of—

1. (a) the consultation under subsection (2); and
2. (b) the changes (if any) which, in the light of the consultation, the Secretary of State has made to his proposals.

(5) In this section—

1. (a) "the services acts" means the Army Act 1955, the Air Force Act 1955, and the Naval Discipline Act 1957; and
2. (b) "disposal" means sale, lease, mortgage, charge or any other disposition.").

The noble Baroness said: I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 276ZA, 276ZAA, 276ZAB and 276B. Those Members of the Committee who have spent many hours on the Housing Bill will, I hope, forgive me for introducing a new clause which addresses the issue of the Government's plans for the military estate defence housing portfolio.

Let me outline briefly the nature and the history of those plans. Before I do so I wish to say that I have discussed my approach to the clause fully with the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, who is co-sponsor of the clause. He is unfortunately unavoidably prevented from being here tonight, but he is fully in agreement with all I have to say. I should add that the clause is aimed at securing a review of the new proposals for the married quarters estate. It is not intended in any way to interfere with or obstruct existing arrangements under which discrete surplus housing is being sold off. If the wording of the clause inadvertently proves to have that effect, I would of course wish to modify it accordingly before Report.

The armed forces own a large number of houses or married quarters scattered over the country in estates or patches. Many of them, because of the rapid—too rapid—run-down in numbers arising from Options for Change and the Defence Costs Study, are now unoccupied. Those which are occupied are in many cases in disgracefully poor condition.

The Ministry of Defence rightly reviewed various ways of improving those houses. More money was needed. There was none. It considered a solution known as the targeted sale option; that is, the sale of empty properties no longer needed. I believe that 4,500 such quarters have already been sold. But in June 1995 it decided that the sale of those properties, many in poor condition, would not solve its problem. It looked instead at a new market study produced by NatWest and decided to sell off the whole defence estate portfolio, excluding those quarters in Scotland and Northern Ireland, to one buyer.

The plan provided for a 25-year lease-back arrangement for those properties that the Ministry of Defence needs at present to retain, and also involved a steady release of those retained estates so that a certain percentage of them reverts to the buyer during the 25-year period for redevelopment.

The buyer has the right to move service families from estates which are, in the majority, empty to new equivalent accommodation. Comparable or equivalent accommodation is a subjective question. Although the leaflet issued about the sale says that the MoD will have "substantial control" over which properties it chooses to hold and which it gives up, who defines "substantial"? The legal document is complicated.

The Secretary of State announced those plans in the other place in November 1995. He wrote on 28th November, To occupiers of all MoD homes".

That letter went to those in England and Wales but not in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Germany, Cyprus and other service families at that time serving outside England and Wales but who would be equally affected in future. He told them that the sale would not change their entitlement to married quarters and would not change the MoD's responsibility for managing, maintaining and allocating quarters. That would continue through the Defence Housing Executive, and the sale would enable the MoD to invest in upgrading the housing stock where necessary.

He concluded by saying that he would not sell the married quarters unless he could do so on the right terms and that meant not just a good price but full protection for the interests of occupants. In short, he said, it would either be a good deal or no sale. His key priority would be the interests and well-being of service families. At the same time, the very brief leaflet to which I have referred was distributed on the issue.

That decision was apparently regarded as an internal housekeeping decision by the Secretary of State which had, of course, full Treasury support. It was promulgated internally. I have concerns which I know to be widely shared not only by the families whose future is in question but by the Defence Select Committee in the other place. First, there is the fact that such a decision, which will affect every single service family at a time when defence has suffered constant threats, constant change and constant cuts, based on very flawed arguments ever since Options for Change, and at a time when the services have been promised stability and no more changes, can be taken without any opportunity for Parliament to consider it. That is why it has been necessary to put forward the new clause.

The manner in which the decision has been put to the service families is calculated to create the greatest possible anxiety, uncertainty and fear for the future. At a time when recruitment is a serious problem and retention all important, it seems amazing that the concerns expressed by the Army Families Federation, the sister organisation representing the RAF, the British Legion and SSAFA have not been effectively addressed. Indeed, they have not been addressed at all. It is not enough simply to tell them that it will be all right on the day and that they should simply rely on the Secretary of State to do nothing which is not in their best interests. If there are real advantages for them in this radical proposal they have yet to be convinced. Anxious wives make anxious husbands. This is just the sort of threat to their already fragile security to make them decide to leave the services. Is that the Government's intention?

Perhaps I may cite some of the anxieties which service families, it seems to me, are fully justified in wishing to see addressed at once. Take entitlement, for instance. The terms of the agreement with the developer/purchaser allow the latter a site exchange option. Under this, if the purchaser wants to exchange a site currently occupied by a married quarters patch he must provide something which fulfils a number of criteria, including being suitable for a cohesive community such as a regimental patch would be. It must be comparable. But who will be the judge of that? The memorandum says that it will be an arbitrator, not the MoD. What becomes then of the service families living in the site which the developer wants and of the Secretary of State's assurance that the sale will have no impact on their rights or position as an occupant? In view of the possible profit in redevelopment, will not the landlord litigate before the arbitrator? The criteria are very broad and they must be open to many interpretations.

Still on the legal issues, the purchaser will after 25 years have the right, if it can establish that it has a genuine prospect of redeveloping an estate, to take that estate from the MoD and redevelop it. Who will decide that? The MoD is sufficiently aware of the dangers to have announced on 5th June to the Defence Select Committee that it would be creating a ministerial certificate which would allow the proper safeguards to be applied 25 years hence with a different Minister. What will be the legal status of that certificate on judicial review?

There are very many questions I could ask about the married quarters initiative but the hour is late. However, my chief concern is the disastrous effect on service morale which these and many other uncertainties and fears are having. There may be answers and I hope that there are, although I take leave to doubt whether that brand new agency, the Defence Housing Executive, and the MoD's lawyers can hope to negotiate on anything like equal terms with a large and rich international consortium. I cannot but remember too that the DHE will have been taught to think in terms of market forces rather than service morale as its first consideration.

I need hardly add that one of the anxieties felt in the services and shared by the Defence Select Committee is the implications for security of selling the defence estate to an international consortium, whether it is Japanese, American, Dutch or whatever. I quote those nationalities from the press alone, of course.

The committee was told that they had demonstrated an understanding of MoD and service priorities and because of that had made it to the short list. Well, they would, wouldn't they? But does it make it right when the security of the country is involved? Service families are, and feel themselves to be, particularly vulnerable. As Gerry Adams says, the IRA has not gone away. But that will not be the first consideration of the developers of the site.

There will be those who will argue, as the MoD does, that this is a marvellous deal because it will enable service living conditions to be improved and poor quarters will be upgraded over several years with the £100 million which it will be allowed to retain for that purpose from the sale.

There will be those, like the authors of the Bett Report, who will regard the probable mix of service and non-service families as a happy integration into society. There will be those who argue that in any event more and more families will choose to buy their own houses.

But there is a very important and significant section of service families who value and need the regimental patch, especially young 17 or 18 year-old wives with small children whose husbands may have been in Bosnia or in Northern Ireland for two years running at Christmas. They are vulnerable and need the support of the regimental family and the safety of a service environment which excludes drugs and violence.

They have not yet been consulted. Their representatives have been told that they are not to worry their pretty little heads. Their legitimate anxieties have not been dealt with. The machinery for proper consultation purports to exist—the very new Defence Housing Executive. But it proves that that executive is there to consult on everything but this plan.

The Minister has met representatives of the Army Families Federation at intervals. Of course he has, and with his usual courtesy. The housing project team did a presentation covering the time-frame for the project. The Defence Housing Executive, which started functioning only on 1st April of this year, is, according to the leaflet, taking attitude surveys and setting up local consultation groups. It has also issued a newsletter and brokered a customer charter. But its activities concern only questions of management. It is on those issues that its consultations take place, and it evidently regards the proposal to sell the married quarters estate as outside its remit.

If the representatives of the families remain as anxious as they undoubtedly are, that suggests that they are experiencing the not unusual form of government consultation which consists of telling them what will happen and not listening to or responding to their concerns. What listening has been done has been in response to the Defence Select Committee, and that is very late. The ministerial certificate is one such response. That only proves my point that this was and is too important a national issue to be left to in-house decisions never discussed in Parliament.

But unless the MoD can really consult as opposed to simply saying, "This is what will happen. Don't worry. Father knows best", I assure the Minister, who I think will have had some indication of the anxieties felt when he answered my noble friend Lord Vivian in the House last week, that the feelings of doubt, turbulence, uncertainty and general vulnerability are real and dangerous. There will be no point in having nice, new, refurbished quarters, or at least not in terms of national defence, if the families have opted out of the services; and they will.

Therefore, I urge the Minister in the strongest terms to set in motion a real consultative exercise where answers to questions are given, and one which embraces all service families, and report the results back to both Houses to allow the Secretary of State, in the light of both the consultation and a general debate, to consider further effective measures designed to restore confidence and to respond to genuine concerns.

The Secretary of State said in his letter that he will not sell the married quarters unless he can do so on the right terms and, that means not just a good price but full protection for the interests of the occupants".

I am aware, largely I submit through the failure of the MoD to listen earlier to legitimate concerns, that time is short because the decision on the bid needs, on the present timetable, to be made in the summer. But fortunately the preliminary information memorandum on the married quarters estate contains a wise provision. It says clearly that: The Secretary of State may at his discretion amend the timetable, alter the basis of the transaction or decide not to proceed with it at any time".

I believe that we should not proceed with it, but I am asking him to amend the timetable to provide time for consultation and more thought and then to provide specific reassurance for the service families and the country, through a debate in Parliament, on the specific risks inherent in the proposals as they stand at present. It is the least we owe them.

I cannot stress too strongly that the Secretary of State has said in the clearest terms in the memorandum to would-be purchasers that the timetable may at his discretion be amended and the basis of the transaction altered at any time. There is still time and what he has offered is what we are asking for. But we wish Parliament to be part of the process on such a major national issue. I beg to move.

Lord Clifford of Chudleigh

I am most grateful to the noble Baroness for introducing the clause and wholeheartedly support what she said. Members of the Armed Forces live in odd, varied accommodation during their service career: underwater in a submarine for three months; alone in a cockpit, thousands of feet up in the sky or scraping the earth's surface, cramped and breathing oxygen; or, as I know from first-hand knowledge, in a trench, tent, snowhole, the back of a Warrior armoured car or tank. But we were all happy and confident that our families were secure in the married quarters provided by Her Majesty's Government.

But wait, my Lords: Prime Minister's Question Time, an Early Day Motion in the other place, all concerned with flogging our secure homes. So the married armed service personnel will not have the traditional landlord—Her Majesty's Government. No, the married quarters will be sold, the asset value changed—it will probably rise—and another landlord will purchase that vital asset of family security that ensures the spirit and cohesion of our Armed Forces.

Like all Ministers and Secretaries of State, the Minister of Defence is the Chancellor's poodle. For £1.5 billion he is prepared to disrupt the family atmosphere of the regiment, the naval base and the Royal Air Force base. It is recognised that there are 5,000 vacant married quarters, but rather than throw them on to the open market, why not allow the recently established Defence Housing Executive to conduct the sale and use the money to refurbish and repair the remaining existing married quarters? That is the one sure way of keeping our servicemen in the Armed Forces at this time when recruitment is low.

All Members of the Committee know that our Armed Forces are recognised for their high standard and versatility. In the past our Armed Forces gave us the freedom to have our own homes. Without the security of one landlord, the servicemen will look after themselves, buy their own house, probably find another job, if there is one available. It will undermine the confidence of "the patch", the ship, the pilots. If they do not find a job, they will then draw unemployment benefit and, much to the discomfort of the Government, increase the unemployment figures. The Chancellor ought to know that money can be burnt. Peace cannot and must not. Do not privatise the peacekeepers.

Lord Swinfen

Before supporting the amendment, I declare an interest. Two of my daughters are married to serving officers; and one is a serving officer herself. They are entitled, therefore, to service accommodation.

I understand that the proposal is to sell the service quarters on a 25 year lease-back. If an individual were going to buy a 25-year lease in a single dwelling, he would have considerable difficulty in raising funds from a building society. The building society would want at least a 60-year lease, preferably one for 99 years, or one for over 100 years. Therefore, there must be something in it for the purchaser in order to make him pay a price that the Treasury considers suitable—something approaching the figure on which a prudent building society would lend; in other words, something that would make the value the same as the length of lease.

Using my surveyor's hat, I assume that there must be very considerable redevelopment potential in the service quarters. The financier who funds the purchaser will not want to wait 25 years before seeing some return on his capital, and will put pressure on the purchaser to undertake some redevelopment as soon as possible, breaking up the married patches, cherry picking and leaving odd bits and pieces of the most uncomfortable, inaccessible and undesirable of the quarters in the country.

What will happen at the end of the 25 year lease? The services will not necessarily have any right to continue. Will the Treasury find the funds to build those quarters all over again? It has got rid of them once. It might have to buy them again. Is this really a good financial move? It is better to maintain property than to have to replace it.

I suspect that the proposal has been thought up by the Treasury. I believe that there was a report in the papers about a year ago that the Treasury might have to move out of its building into another because it had been so unwise in the management of its building that it would cost too much to bring it up to standard. I wonder whether the Treasury has its thinking right on the service quarters.

What will be the position when our bases overseas run down, as will happen from time to time? We may open up others depending on the state of the world. But with the peace dividend about which everyone is talking at present it is more likely that our bases will be run down. We will bring our troops home, together with their families. In most cases the families are overseas with the troops at present and will need housing in this country. Do we want to be in the same position as the old Soviet Union which could not take its troops back from Germany because there was nowhere for them to live? That is the situation we appear to be heading towards.

The fighting unit, whether a regiment, battalion or a ship, needs to have its people readily accessible. The married quarters patch is useful because in an emergency someone can go round and get the men into operation with their unit. At the same time, when the men are overseas in a difficult and dangerous situation, the married patch is where the families are, giving each other mutual support in times of danger, considerable uncertainty, and probably unhappiness, not really knowing what is going on. I strongly support the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lady Park of Monmouth. I hope that the Government pay attention to it. Even if they do not like this particular amendment, I hope they will do what my noble friend requests.

11.15 p.m.

Baroness Strange

Briefly, I support my noble friend Lady Park. I wish to make two points. Disposing of assets which one believes at the time to be surplus to requirement has very often been proved to be a false economy. My aunts always kept everything: short string, long string and a box of string too short to be of further use. The box of string too short to be of further use has proved very good for my grandchildren to make tails for shell mice with. Even fortune-tellers do not always get the future right; nor do governments.

My second point is that our servicemen and women are generally acknowledged, and certainly always in this Chamber, to be the best in the world. The cuts initiated by Options for Change, and increased since, have made for a feeling of instability. If families feel that they may have to move at short notice, it is very important that they are confident of having suitable accommodation into which they can move. With this new plan of sale, the families do not have that confidence. They are seriously upset and worried about it. This is not the way to keep them happy and secure. With unhappy families, we shall have unhappy servicemen—or none at all. Even the birds of the air have nests.

Lord Williams of Elvel

It will come as no surprise to the Committee that, with one qualification that I shall express, I support the amendment. The qualification is very simple. The Committee will notice that my name is not down to this amendment, for the simple reason that I should like the Government to scrub the whole scheme. I do not want them to become involved in any detailed negotiation of this sort. I should like them to abandon the whole exercise. So we start from that position.

After Options for Change, Front Line First and all the other changes that have taken place, I cannot think of anything more destructive of morale in the Armed Forces than suddenly to announce that married quarters for service personnel are to be sold off to the highest bidder. It is the most extraordinary operation that the Government are now embarked upon.

I am told that the price will be £1.5 billion or thereabouts. That is an interesting figure. I have no doubt that the Chancellor of the Exchequer would be very glad to receive £1.5 billion if he could receive it without any destruction of morale in our Armed Forces. I was told by the noble Earl at Question Time the other day that international capital will be involved—because £1.5 billion is a big sum; the Japanese, the Germans and the Americans will be involved, or whoever it is. I am also told that there are amendments to the previous fiasco of trying to sell off bits and pieces of the MoD married quarters estate, which cost the taxpayer something in the order of £5 million to wind up some curious company that had been set up and did not work. Matters had rumbled on, there was some curious arrangement and it all seemed to run into the ground, at some cost. I noted that the noble Lord, Lord Henley, who is on the Front Bench, responded to questions in his position as Minister at the time.

The noble Earl will have noticed, as the noble Lord, Lord Clifford of Chudleigh, pointed out, that certain events have occurred in another place. Indeed there has been some publicity in the newspapers about this matter. I hope very much that the noble Earl will have taken on board what the noble Baroness, Lady Park, said. I hope that he will respond to the noble Baroness's amendment in a positive spirit, not echoing the words of the Prime Minister at Question Time today, saying, "Fine", but saying, "No, we shall concede that this is not the right thing to do and not the right way to go forward. It would be destructive of morale in our Armed Forces and we believe now that the time has come to go back on certain ideas that certain consultants in the Ministry of Defence seemed to have suggested which have been adopted by the Ministry of Defence. We shall junk that and attend to what has been expressed in the Committee in this Chamber this evening and also what has been expressed in another place on another occasion". I hope very much that the noble Earl will be flexible on this matter and be able at least to grant the noble Baroness, Lady Park, her amendment, which from my point of view is only a half-way house. I should like the full house, but, in the words of Hesiod, half a loaf is better than no loaf.

Earl Russell

It falls to me to complete the circle of every quarter of the Chamber. It is not for me to prescribe particular solutions on this subject, but we have heard tonight the kind of feelings to which any prudent government will listen. I am sure that the noble Earl is a prudent member of the Government and I am sure that he has listened.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence (Earl Howe)

I listened with great care to my noble friend and the other noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. I say immediately that I yield to nobody in my respect for my noble friend and her motives in tabling these amendments. I recognise that she is wholly sincere in her point of view, even though that point of view rests, as I shall hope to demonstrate, on some fundamental misapprehensions.

However, for her part I hope that my noble friend will recognise the Government's unshakeable commitment to service housing. Members of the Committee should be in no doubt that providing good homes for our service personnel and their families is and always has been our key objective. We also remain committed to stability, to the preservation of the married quarters patch and to making rapid advances towards improving the quality of quarters. Those are key tasks of government and our proposals for service housing, far from shying away from them, instead reaffirm our commitment to them.

My noble friend's amendments refer to consultation and parliamentary approval, both on the face of it unexceptionable principles. But it is clear to me and no doubt to the Committee that what we are considering here are in practice wrecking amendments, amendments which, if adopted at this late stage of the sale of the married quarters estate, would effectively derail the whole process.

Lord Williams of Elvel

I am sorry to interrupt the noble Earl at this early stage of his speech. I am sure he has a very elegant speech written by people I know not. This is not a wrecking amendment. This is not an early stage. It might be a late stage in the Government, but there is plenty of time. We do not have to go through all this palaver to get £1.5 billion just before a General Election so that the Government can give it away to the electorate. That is not the problem. The problem is to find some reasonable solution to the married quarters estate. It is not a wrecking amendment at all. If I may speak for the Government in waiting, we are perfectly happy to accept it.

Earl Howe

I am sure the noble Lord is extremely generous in that regard, but I beg to differ. There is no doubt in my mind that if the Committee felt constrained to accept this amendment it would severely damage, if not derail completely, the plans which the Government have laid out quite openly over the past eight to nine months. We are at a late stage. However, I hope that my remarks will assuage the noble Lord's concerns a little.

The choice before us is a clear one: either to reject the amendments and so complete the final leg of a journey which began with our 1992 manifesto commitment to improve the quality and management of service housing; or to adopt the amendments and effectively turn back to the ways of the past. It gives me no pleasure to remind the Committee—though I shall do so—what that past amounted to. The tale of the MoD's mismanagement of housing stock has been an extremely sorry one.

Lord Williams of Elvel

I cannot accept the noble Earl coming before this Committee and reciting a history of mismanagement by his own department. I find that absurd.

Earl Howe

That remark from the noble Lord clearly shows that he has absolutely no understanding whatever of the background to the Government's proposals. If he is not prepared to acknowledge that there is a severe empty homes problem at the MoD, then he has not begun to address these issues.

Lord Williams of Elvel

Perhaps the noble Earl—

Earl Howe

I am sorry. The noble Lord has interrupted me twice and I am not prepared to give way a third time unless he wishes to raise a particularly substantive point.

Even today, after all the efforts of recent years, one married quarter in five stands empty. We shall always need some spare capacity, but for the MoD to own and pay for maintaining and securing over 12,000 empty married quarters in England and Wales alone is financially and morally unacceptable. While mismanaging our stock in that way, we have not even succeeded in providing a decent housing service for our Armed Forces.

Inadequate and ill-planned investment has left far too many of our service families living in run-down quarters, as my noble friend acknowledged—in the worst cases in conditions approaching squalor. That is the extreme. It is not the generality but there are places of which we are ashamed. It is not wholly surprising that that should be so. The priority of the Ministry and of our Armed Forces over decades has been defence. In any competition for resources, whether finance or management attention, a function such as housing would always lose out to the demands of activities and programmes more central to our primary role. It is simply no good to argue, as my noble friend and others seem to be doing, that the right solution for service housing is to do as we have done in the past but to do it better. We tried that and it did not work. We need fundamental change. That is what the sale of the married quarters estate will achieve.

As we move to the final stages of the sale process, two great prizes are now within our grasp. First, the sale will finally resolve our long-standing ability to dispose of the thousands of service quarters we no longer need.

The means will be to hand. The MoD will be able to relinquish unwanted properties simply by cancelling a lease at six months' notice. No longer will we be required to play the estate agent. The incentive will be there too as old habits of hoarding properties for which we have no real requirement are subjected to the discipline of paying rent.

Secondly, we will at last have the resources to carry through the urgent programme of upgrading poor quality housing which has rightly been a long-held service aspiration. We will set aside £100 million from the sale proceeds for a massive investment programme which will enable us to get the bulk of our quarters throughout the United Kingdom up to grade one condition in five to seven years. We shall be free of the burden of attempting to deal with quarters that we no longer want and shall be able to be sure that the houses we do need are brought up to the standard that our service families deserve.

Why the opposition? I am the first to appreciate that a degree of uncertainty in this sensitive area was to be expected. But legitimate concerns seem to have been overlaid with some fundamental misapprehensions. My ministerial colleagues and I have dealt with these so extensively in so many different fora over recent weeks and months that one begins to feel that certain of our interlocutors are simply determined not to hear. But I shall try again briefly to lay out the facts, the first and foremost of which is that, setting aside the upgrading of the housing stock, the sale should make little or no discernible difference to the occupants of the estate. I shall look at some of the specific concerns that have been raised.

The sale will have no impact on service personnel's entitlement to quarters. The MoD is, and will remain, committed to providing housing for those personnel who wish to exercise their entitlement. Our policy remains, as I emphasised in this Chamber last week, to provide the right houses in the right location at the right time. That policy is quite unaffected by the sale. I think it is worth reminding my noble friend that that policy is in no way limited by or to the quarters that comprise the existing estate.

What about interference by the new purchaser? There is no question of individual occupants having to have any dealings with the new purchaser of the estate. For maintenance and general customer service, they will continue to look, as in the past, to the MoD and there will be no implications whatever for security.

Noble Lords have referred to the patch. There is no threat to patch life. We fully understand the importance of preserving cohesive service housing communities, with all that they imply for solidarity and mutual support. But we have catered for that by ensuring that under the sale arrangements we will retain substantial control of which quarters we choose to retain and which to relinquish. The limited opportunities—and they are limited—available to the new landlord to secure vacant possession of individual housing sites are for this reason confined to whole sites. He has no scope for introducing undesirable neighbours or cherry-picking the best houses. Nor will he be able to use these limited opportunities to cream off the best housing. The reason he will not is that detailed, legally enforceable criteria will ensure that any site exchange will go ahead only if the exchange site offered is as good as or better than the original. The ministerial veto on operational grounds will protect us from losing key sites to redevelopment.

Why then should we object to consultation? First, because the analogy implied with local authority housing and large-scale voluntary transfers of local authority housing to a housing association is, I suggest to my noble friend, entirely misplaced. LSVTs have real implications for tenants in terms of their rights and legal position and of their rents and the maintenance service that they receive. But, as I have explained, none of that applies in the case of the occupants of our married quarters under the proposed sale.

However, there is another reason on which I invite my noble friend to reflect. We have already consulted and communicated extensively. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Defence wrote to the occupants of all married quarters in England and Wales to explain the position last autumn when the sale was originally announced. A parallel communication went to all personnel worldwide, as have subsequent updating messages. And, of course, the relevant service staffs up to and including the chiefs of staff have been fully involved in the development of our proposals since their inception. Indeed, they have had a major part in shaping them. Hence the chiefs' agreement that the proposals satisfy the interests of the services, a fundamental pre-condition, as we have made clear all along, for completing the transaction.

What then would be the effects of the proposed amendments? As I began by saying, and I repeat, they would simply derail this long sought opportunity finally to get our service housing right. We are in the closing stages of the sale process. It is essential to maintain a tight time-scale if the process is to be managed in a way which ensures the best possible outcome for both the services and the taxpayer. It suggests that the consultation down the chain of command which we have had was an inadequate way of safeguarding the individual serviceman's interests, with profound implications for the future management of our Armed Forces.

Finally and perversely—and this is a point which my noble friend herself adverted to—it would hamstring all our future surplus property disposals, sale or no sale, by introducing further delay and uncertainty into the process. Far from getting the 20 per cent. vacancy rate down, we would be looking at additional thousands of properties standing empty. I doubt very much whether that is really what my noble friend wants to see.

Perhaps I may deal with another misrepresentation that all this is about short-term financial opportunism and getting receipts into government coffers. When one considers the history of this proposal and the four years' hard work which has led up to the point we have reached today, that accusation is self-evidently absurd. Equally absurd is the idea that a one-off capital receipt can be used to finance tax cuts. They can only be founded on long-term affordability, as the Committee will only too readily appreciate. We are doing what we are doing because it is the right answer for the Ministry of Defence, the services and the occupants of married quarters. It would be tragic if this opportunity were to be sabotaged at the point when a successful outcome is at last within reach. I hope that my noble friend will reflect on that and on the assurances that I have repeated tonight.

As I said, I have listened carefully to my noble friend, as I hope I always do. I undertake to her now that if she withdraws her amendments I shall give very careful consideration to the points she has made between now and Report stage. There was much in her speech that was necessarily condensed. I shall also be happy to meet my noble friend privately to talk through all the issues in more detail. I hope that she will feel able to respond to that suggestion, which I make in a constructive spirit, so as to ensure that we really do achieve the right result for the services, service families and the nation's housing.

Lord Williams of Elvel

Before the noble Earl concludes his peroration, can he answer me two points? First, will he accept that he has produced this evening a denigration of his own department and previous Ministers such as I have not heard in my 10 years' experience in this House? He has accused the MoD, of which he is a Minister, of mismanagement, bungling, incapacity, incoherence and incompetence. Who is responsible for the MoD? Is it not Ministers? It is no good shifting the responsibility to civil servants, which the noble Earl seemed to be trying to do. Therefore, if that is the case, as the noble Earl said it was, should not Ministers be taking responsibility for the shambles that he has described?

Secondly, he said that £1.5 billion coming into the coffers will not finance tax cuts. Does the noble Earl not understand the public accounts system and that the whole purpose of privatisation in the 1980s and 1990s and the use of North Sea oil proceeds was to finance tax cuts?

Earl Howe

It gave me no pleasure to rehearse the shortcomings of the Ministry of Defence over the past few years in disposing of surplus housing. Indeed, Ministers must take their share of responsibility because they dictate policy. That is precisely why we are at this point today. It is because Ministers wish to see something done about the problem that these proposals are now before the Committee. As I said, I believe that they are the right ones. I do not wish in the least to conceal the problems that they are meant to solve because they are very real ones.

On the noble Lord's second point, I do not accept that the amount of money that is likely to be achieved from the sale will make any difference at all to consideration of his Budget speech by my right honourable friend the Chancellor. I am not prepared to disclose at the Dispatch Box the order of money that we expect to receive from the sale, but it is by no means the largest privatisation that the Government have undertaken and I am confident that what I said earlier about its significance for tax cuts was absolutely correct.

Lord Swinfen

Before my noble friend sits down, perhaps I may refer him back to his point about maintenance. I think he said that the property would continue to be maintained by the Ministry of Defence. There is commonly a full repairing and insuring lease. Will the MoD be paying for all the maintenance or will it be in the position of a tenant who can demand from an ordinary landlord that the landlord carries out certain maintenance and makes proper provision for water, heating and all the rest of it?

Also, what will happen at the end of the suggested 25-year tenancy? Will the MoD have to hand the property back to the freeholder in top condition? That could be very expensive because the property will have to be put into that condition. If the MoD follows a normal lease it will have to redecorate all the property both internally and externally within the last six months or year of the lease—a terrific cost—and carry out any repairs to make certain that the property is up to standard.

My noble friend also said that if a site was going to be exchanged for development, it would have to be exchanged for a site as good as, or better than, the existing site. Who decides: the MoD or the freeholder, because the freeholder will argue until he is blue in the face that the site that he wants to give in exchange is an excellent one? The fact that it is right next-door to and down wind of the local sewage works will not occur to him.

Finally, has this matter been discussed in another place? I have not read any reports of it being discussed there and I would suggest that if it has not been discussed in another place, it is probably the duty of this Committee to incorporate the amendment into the Bill to ensure that it is discussed in another place when the Bill returns there. After all, Members of another place are the elected representatives of this nation.

Earl Russell

The Minister illustrated why I have said before that according to governments there are only two categories of amendment—the unnecessary and the wrecking. Having listened to a great deal of what has been said, this amendment is clearly not unnecessary, so perhaps that is why the Minister thinks that it is wrecking.

The noble Earl has listened to expressions of feeling that I should have thought any government would be wise to heed. He said, "Some of our interlocutors do not wish to listen". Between the Front Benches that sort of thing may be common currency. One always thinks that the Front Bench opposite does not wish to listen. Sometimes one is right; sometimes one is not. But I hope that the noble Earl will make clear that he did not intend to apply that remark to the noble Baroness, Lady Park of Monmouth. If he did, I cannot think of anyone more inappropriate to whom it should be applied.

11.45 p.m.

Earl Howe

I certainly did not intend to imply that my noble friend had failed to listen. We have had some extremely helpful discussions, as my noble friend has been kind enough to acknowledge. I hope that I do not put words into her mouth if I say that my noble friend accepted one or two of the key points put to her. The discussions to which I referred related much more to the representatives of service families. They always approach meetings with me in a spirit of good will. I very much enjoy those meetings. For reasons that I cannot discern, I do not believe that I have made headway with them.

My noble friend Lord Swinfen asked about the maintenance of the estate. He is quite correct. The maintenance of the married quarters will remain the responsibility of the Ministry of Defence in the shape of the Defence Housing Executive. The landlord's responsibilities to upgrade will not exist to any substantial degree. One has to qualify that to an extent by saying that negotiations with the final purchaser, whoever it may be, have not yet taken place. At the end of the tenancy it is envisaged that the Ministry's responsibility will extend to handing back properties that are no longer needed in a habitable condition. The Landlord and Tenant Act provides the Ministry of Defence with security of tenure at the end of the 25-year term. Should the Ministry want to renew the lease it will be able to do so other than in the very narrowly defined circumstances in which the landlord wants to redevelop. I shall be glad to write to my noble friend and provide further details.

Lord Swinfen

Perhaps I may intervene before my noble friend moves on. I believe I am correct in saying that under the Landlord and Tenant Act even if the tenant has the right to extend the lease he must put the property into good condition. If the property is not in good condition the landlord has grounds for not extending the lease.

Earl Howe

The agreement will provide that the property must be in a habitable condition. It is not our intention to let the properties decay into an uninhabitable condition. I do not believe there is any real difference between my noble friend and myself on this matter.

Lord Swinfen

But "habitable condition" is not as high a condition as "good condition". The landlord would require that the property be in good condition. There may be a capital cost to the Ministry of Defence—in other words, the taxpayer—at the end of the first 25 years. My noble friend may not be able to answer me now, but it is a point that should be made and therefore I make it.

Earl Howe

I do not believe that much separates my noble friend and myself. We intend to maintain the property in good condition. However, I will write to him to clarify the matter since I understand his concerns.

As to the site exchange and who decides it, over the past few months a very great deal of time has been spent with our lawyers drawing up detailed conditions on which the site exchange option may be exercised. Those conditions are very narrowly circumscribed. It is not simply a matter of an independent person or arbitrator taking a subjective view. Properly formulated cases will have to be presented, if that is required. He or she will decide on the basis of the conditions drawn up in the legal agreement whether or not a site exchange meets all the conditions. That is how it would be decided. I stress that the conditions are extremely rigid. They are not such that a coach and horses can be driven through them, about which my noble friend Lady Park has some anxiety.

My noble friend referred to discussion in another place. I can tell him that the matter of the married quarters estate was debated recently during the debate on the Royal Air Force. I am aware of certain intentions by Members of another place to bring forward this matter for debate at an early stage. I cannot, of course, comment further on that because I have not been privy to those discussion. No doubt it will be up to Members of another place, if they so choose, to bring forward such a Motion.

Baroness Park of Monmouth

I am very grateful to those noble Lords who have supported me at this late hour in what I believe to be a very important issue.

Turning to my noble friend, the Minister, I had, in preparing what I was going to say, written that I would thank him for the small morsels of comfort I thought I might receive. I had not expected to be told that I was promoting a wrecking amendment. I thought I had lent over backwards to try to produce a formula which would allow the Government to do what I consider they should do: keep the word of the Secretary of State in his statement in the memorandum, that he would be prepared, and he felt himself free, to change the timetable, vary the conditions or abandon the idea. I have not urged abandoning the idea because I am perfectly prepared, as I hope many will be, to be convinced that the perception of anxiety, and it is a serious and wide perception felt by those who are most affected—the families—remains and needs to be allayed. I fear that remains true.

People will say the devil is in the detail, and that is part of the problem, but, unlike the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Elvel, I respect the Minister for having stated how disastrously things have gone in the past. I share the shame, as everybody does, but I think it is probably right and fair that it should be admitted. I do not think it makes any difference at all to the duty which we have to make sure that disastrous mistakes of a different kind are not made in the future.

Incidentally, I made no reference to or comparison with local authorities, nor did I say anything about the Treasury. I reserve my views on the Treasury—I expect most people do.

I shall make one minor point, which I would like answered at some stage, and that concerns the issue of rents. I understand that rents are index-linked, will be reviewed every five years and will be a guaranteed figure or the index-linked figure, whichever is the higher. I cannot help feeling that every detail that I come upon in what I have read and studied so far seems always to be to the financial advantage of the developer. I suppose that makes sense if one is considering issues in terms of money only, but I happen to feel that the riches of the country lie in people, and in the Armed Forces in particular. Therefore, I remain to be convinced and although I have the greatest respect for my noble friend the Minister and I feel sure he believes every word he says, I am not able to feel the same touching trust as he does.

I will, indeed, withdraw my amendment because to test the feeling of the House at this late hour, and with the numbers present, would clearly be absurd. That does not mean that I will go away. Like the IRA, I will not. I will consider what the Minister has said, and I will be very happy to be further instructed, but I intend to return to the matter at Report stage, with the permission of the House. I truly hope that, having made their macho statements, the Government will be able to reconsider and produce a more positive reply.

There is an answer to be found. I have little doubt that if the Government are right in saying that this is a good thing, a right thing, and has been carefully thought out, then all we need is to have that demonstrated to us on the Floor of this place and debated fully. I shall return to the issue on Report and on Third Reading. In the meanwhile, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Baroness Flather moved Amendment No. 270BB:

Before Clause 191, insert the following new clause—

EMERGENCY COMMUNICATION SYSTEM

(".—(1) A local housing authority shall have power to provide, inside or outside its area, a facility whereby occupiers of dwelling houses or other residential accommodation who are vulnerable as a result of old age, disability or other special reason may, by agreement, be connected to an emergency communication system. (2) A local housing authority may make a reasonable charge for any facility provided by it under subsection (1) above.").

The noble Baroness said: This new clause forms a modest and uncontroversial addition to the Bill. It regularises the position which exists in local authorities up and down the country. Many local authorities provide alarm systems for vulnerable elderly people in their area for a charge. The ADC is worried that there seems to be a problem as to whether the authorities can charge for the service and therefore provide it. That is causing anxiety to members of the association. So I am bringing forward the amendment to try to get the position sorted out.

The service can clearly be provided to council tenants, but we are talking about those who are not council tenants. The ADC has made considerable efforts to try to negotiate, initially with the DoE. It was then referred to the Department of Health and had considerable discussions with it. It at first suggested that the provision could be tagged on to a 1994 Bill. Eventually the matter was referred back to the DoE, and that is where we now are.

When one of the Members of the other place approached the DoE it was suggested that the Member should again go to the Department of Health. This matter cannot be sent around the departments and not clarified at some stage. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will consider this matter and try to clarify the situation for local authorities and allow them to continue to provide this much-needed service for people living in their area. It should clearly be for the vulnerable only and not those who do not need extra services.

The Audit Commission's 1995 annual report stated: Auditors have not been eager to mount a challenge since the amounts involved are not usually significant and the approach fits in with the Government's care in the community initiative. The Commission would strongly support primary legislation to enable districts to provide such schemes".

Notwithstanding that helpful statement, some auditors are raising questions with authorities and putting the brake on further developments. That is creating anxiety for existing developments in case some kind of a challenge is mounted. I strongly urge the Minister to consider this small change in the legislation. It regularises an existing position, does not introduce anything new, is not political, is not controversial and does not wreck anything. I beg to move.

12 midnight

Lord Swinfen

I strongly support the amendment. It is eminently sensible. It seems absolutely daft that an organisation or a local authority can provide such a service to some houses in a street or small area and not to others. It would cut costs in the long run and it would be most sensible.

Baroness Hamwee

Perhaps in a non-political spirit I may show solidarity with the noble Baroness. I have seen these systems and know their value. I was surprised to see the cloud that might be hanging over them. The noble Baroness is entirely right to seek clarification and a resolution and not to leave the matter on the Whitehall merry-go-round.

Lord Lucas

It gives me no pleasure whatever to disappoint my noble friends and so I shall not. The work is in hand. It is our intention to consult the local authority associations and others on our conclusions and proposals and we expect to do so soon. The amendment before us raises many problems which we would hope to solve in the course of those consultations, and I hope that with that considerable comfort my noble friend will feel able to withdraw it.

Baroness Flather

It is rather surprising that my noble friend says that he is consulting the local authorities, as the amendment has been put forward by the Association of District Councils, which is the local authorities' association. It is involved in the issue; no other local authority association is involved. The county councils and parish councils are not involved. Only the Association of District Councils has anything at all to do with the issue. I am amazed that as this amendment has come directly from the ADC my noble friend suggests that he is involved in a consultation with it. Is it a consultation in the future?

Lord Lucas

The consultation will be shortly in the future. It has not happened yet and I believe that this is the first time we have indicated publicly that it is about to happen. I am not surprised that the local authorities did not know about it, but they do now.

Lord Swinfen

Before my noble friend sits down, may I ask whether the results will be ready to be dealt with before the end of the Bill, because it seems to be an excellent vehicle for this matter?

Lord Williams of Elvel

I believe that Members of the Committee opposite are pressing the Minister rather hard. He has said that there will be consultation. If I may advise the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, we ought to leave it at that. It is absurd to suggest that consultation can take place and that it can come immediately.

Lord Lucas

Being supported by the noble Lord, Lord Williams, makes me extremely nervous. I shall have to read my notes carefully to make sure that I have said the right thing. On this, as on other occasions, I believe that the noble Lord is right.

Baroness Flather

Perhaps I may finish what I was going to say. With all due respect to the noble Lord, Lord Williams, I did not rise to advise him not to interrupt my noble friend so many times and perhaps he will refrain from advising me on this particular issue.

The matter was first raised in 1994. It went to the Department of Health and was then referred back to the DoE. It was referred back by the DoE for the purposes of going back to the Department of Health. It would be helpful if my noble friend would look at the history of this matter and talk to members of the ADC, because I am afraid that if this opportunity passes there will not be another for some time. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clauses 191 to 194 agreed to.

Schedule 15 [Miscellaneous provisions]:

Baroness Hamwee moved Amendment No. 270BC:

Page 175, line 48, at end insert—

("Additional succession arrangements by agreement

.—(1) In section 89 of the Housing Act 1985 (succession to periodic tenancy) after subsection (4) insert—

"(5) A tenancy which is a secure tenancy may contain a term providing for succession in cases where no succession takes place under this Act and may contain provisions restricting the removal or amendment of such a term."

(2) In section 17 of the Housing Act 1988 (succession to periodic tenancy) after subsection (5) insert—

("(6) A tenancy which is an assured tenancy may contain a term providing for succession in cases where no succession takes place under the provisions of this Act and may contain provisions restricting the removal or amendment of such a term".").

The noble Baroness said: The amendment seeks to give legal effect to agreements between tenants and landlords in relation to extensions to the right to succeed in the case of people such as carers and same sex couples. The prospective successor has no right at present to enforce the contract since he is not a party to it. I beg to move.

Lord Lucas

Secure tenants enjoy the right of succession. This means that their spouse, or a close relative who has been living in the home for the previous 12 months, may succeed to the tenancy on his death. Assured tenants also have the right of succession for the spouse or someone living with the tenant as husband and wife. In both cases there can only be one succession.

The amendment seeks to extend the right of succession by allowing a landlord to insert a clause into the tenancy agreement to provide for succession where no statutory right exists. Despite its superficial attractions, I believe it to be unnecessary.

There was considerable discussion of succession rights in another place. Examples were cited of unfortunate cases. As a result the Housing Minister gave an undertaking to issue unequivocal guidance to local authorities on how they should deal with such cases. The guidance was issued on 14th May and addresses the same problem as these amendments—the case where a member of the household dies and there is another member of the household left who does not have the right to succeed—but in the context of local authorities' general role in ensuring effective use and fair allocation of their housing stock.

The circular advises that where members of a household have a long-term commitment to their home, local authorities should normally grant a joint tenancy. This will ensure that other adult members of the household who would not otherwise have the right of succession can remain in the house or flat after the tenants' death. Where there is no joint tenancy, and the tenant dies, provided the remaining person has been living with the tenant in the year before the tenant's death; or had been looking after the tenant; or had accepted responsibility for the tenant's dependants, the guidance states the local authority should normally grant a tenancy to the remaining person.

The tenant's guarantee produced by the Housing Corporation already contains some advice on this point for assured tenants of housing associations. It is proposed to amend the guarantee later this year to reflect the position set out in Circular 7/96 as well as the legislative changes in the Bill.

We believe therefore that there is no need to attempt to extend statutory succession rights in the way in which the amendment suggests because of the substantive advice offered by the circular, which has been well received by local authorities, and the tenant's guarantee.

The amendment would give social landlords too wide a discretion to add to succession rights. It suggests that any person who does not have a statutory entitlement to succeed to a tenancy could be given a tenancy. This undermines the generous package of succession rights that exist already.

The amendment may appear to offer greater opportunity to those sharing a home but in reality it leaves the initiative solely with the landlord, allowing him to pick and choose on a case by case basis. Circular 7/96 on the other hand offers firm advice to local authorities on how these cases should normally be dealt with. A person left in a home after the death of a tenant will be quite clear as to what he might expect the local authority policy to be and will be in a position to draw the Department of the Environment's advice to the authority's attention.

With that comfort, I would urge the noble Baroness to withdraw the amendment.

Baroness Hamwee

I must confess that I am too weary to know whether I am comforted. I do not know whether guidance can enable enforcement of an otherwise unenforceable agreement but it would clearly be inappropriate to pursue the matter at this hour. I shall read, in the light of day, what the Minister said. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Baroness Hamwee moved Amendment No. 270BD:

Page 175, line 48, at end insert—

("Extension of certain rights to tenants of registered social landlords

In Chapter I of Part I of Housing Act 1988 (assured tenancies) after section 19 (restriction on levy of distress for rent) insert—

"Extension of certain rights to tenants of registered social landlords.

19A.—(1) Unless otherwise stated, references in this section to a section or a Schedule are references to a section of or a Schedule to the Housing Act 1985.

(2) The provisions of sections 87 to 90 (succession on death of tenant) shall apply on the death of an assured tenant of a registered social landlord as if he were a secure tenant and section 17 of this Act (succession to assured periodic tenancy by spouse) shall not have application in such cases.

(3) The provisions of sections 91 to 94 (assignment, lodgers and subletting) shall apply to an assured tenant of a registered social landlord as if he were a secure tenant and section 15 of this Act (limited prohibition on assignment etc. without consent) shall not have application in such cases.

(4) Sections 96 to 101 (which deal with tenant's improvements) and section 105 (consultation on matters of housing management) shall apply to an assured tenant of a registered social landlord as if he were a secure tenant".").

The noble Baroness said: This is a similar amendment to extend the rights enjoyed by law by secure tenants of registered social landlords to assured tenants. At present the right is not a matter of law but of grace and guidance. The Minister has just referred to the tenants' guarantee. I seek to make the matter one of statutory right. I understand that there are quite frequently disputes as to whether someone has succeeded and the suitability or appropriateness of re-housing following succession. A significant number of cases are resolved only just short of court proceedings. I beg to move.

Lord Lucas

I think I can fully support the spirit behind this amendment which seeks to extend to assured tenants of registered social landlords a number of statutory rights currently enjoyed by secure tenants. But I do not believe the amendment itself is necessary.

Clearly it is reasonable that assured tenants of registered social landlords should be treated no less favourably than secure tenants. But there is more than one way of achieving this. Assured tenants already enjoy the rights which the noble Baroness wishes to extend to them. But they enjoy them as contractual rather than statutory rights.

Housing associations and the other registered social landlords introduced by this Bill are and will be regulated by the housing corporations. The corporations have a power under the Housing Associations Act 1985 to issue guidance approved by the Secretary of State. They have in fact done so. If landlords do not comply with the guidance the corporations have various remedies available to bring them into line.

One element of this guidance is the Tenants' Guarantee. This document sets out very clearly what rights and services tenants are entitled to under an assured tenancy. All the rights which the noble Baroness wishes to see extended to assured tenants are already set out in paragraphs C6 and C7 on page 5 of the current version of the Tenants' Guarantee. These paragraphs list the additional contractual rights which the corporation advises landlords to include within an assured tenancy agreement.

The Housing Corporation's regulatory system is tried and tested and works well. I am sure that the noble Baroness agrees that what is important is that assured tenants should have similar rights to secure tenants, not the mechanisms used to achieve this. They have and will have those rights. If the noble Baroness knows of any circumstances where those rights have been abrogated or not granted properly, I hope that she will draw them to our attention or that of the Housing Corporation.

Baroness Hamwee

Mechanisms are important. I thank the Minister, and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Schedule 15 agreed to.

Clause 195 agreed to.

[Amendment No. 270C not moved.]

Clauses 196 to 199 agreed to.

[Amendment No. 270D not moved.]

Schedule 16 [Repeals]:

Lord Lucas moved Amendment No. 271:

Page 176, line 9, column 3, leave out ("32") and insert ("33").

The noble Lord said: I spoke to this with Amendment No. 185. I beg to move.

On Question, amendment agreed to.

Lord Lucas moved Amendment No. 272:

Page 176, column 3, leave out line 11.

The noble Lord said: Amendment No. 272 concerns Section 60 of the Housing Associations Act 1985. It is, I fear, one which slipped through the net at an earlier stage of the Bill. Before Report in another place, Schedule 3 contained a long list of minor amendments and repeals to other legislation which were consequential on Part I of the Bill. At Report stage those amendments were taken out of the Bill because they were essentially routine. They will be included in an order which we intend to make under Clause 54 later in the summer. That is a point which we discussed earlier. One of those amendments concerns Section 58 of the 1985 Act under which local authorities have powers to promote and assist housing associations and to which Section 60 is directly linked.

We therefore consider that Sections 58 and 60 should be dealt with together in the order rather than separately. I beg to move.

On Question, amendment agreed to.

12.15 a.m.

Lord Lucas moved Amendments Nos. 273 to 275A:

Page 176, line 19, column 3, at end insert—

("Section 79(6) to (10). In section 92(2), the words from "but" to the end.")

Page 177, line 2, column 3, leave out ("56(4),").

Page 177, line 12, at end insert—

("1987 c.31.

Landlord and Tenant Act 1987.

In section 6(9), the words "(subject to section 9(9))". In section 9, in subsection (1)(a), the words "by virtue of any provision of sections 6 to 8", in subsection (1)(b), the words in parentheses and. in subsection (9), the definition of "the protected interest". In section 20(1), in the definition of "the protected interest", the words "(subject to section 9(9))".")

Page 177, line 12, at end insert—

("1987 c. 31.

Landlord and Tenant Act 1987.

Section 24(2)(a)(ii).")

The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendments Nos. 273 to 275A en bloc. I spoke to them with Amendments Nos. 188, 242, 251 and 246C respectively.

On Question, amendments agreed to.

Lord Lucas moved Amendment No. 275B:

Page 182, line 34, column 3, at end insert—

("In Schedule 6, in paragraphs 5(1) and 6(1), the words "with the consent of the Treasury".")

The noble Lord said: Paragraph 9(1)(d) of Schedule 15 abolishes the requirements for Treasury consent for payment of remuneration, allowances and pensions to the chairman, deputy chairman, and members of the Housing Corporation Board, as contained in paragraphs 5 and 6 of Schedule 6 to the Housing Associations Act 1985. The repeals of the relevant words in those paragraphs do not appear in Part XIII of Schedule 16 and the amendment corrects that omission. I beg to move.

On Question, amendment agreed to.

Schedule 16, as amended, agreed to.

Clause 200 agreed to.

Earl Russell moved Amendment No. 275C:

After Clause 200, insert the following new clause—

SAME SEX RELATIONSHIPS

(" .—(1) In this Act and the enactments set out in subsection (3) below, references to persons living together as husband and wife shall be treated as including persons of the same sex living together in a corresponding relationship and "member of the family" shall be construed accordingly.

(2) In this Act and the enactments set out in subsection (3) below, where "member of the family" would include a person living together with another as husband and wife it shall also include a person of the same sex living together with another in a corresponding relationship.

(3) The enactments referred to in subsections (1) and (2) above are the Housing Act 1985 and the Housing Act 1988.

(4) In the enactments set out in subsection (6) below, references to persons living together as husband and wife shall be treated as including persons of the same sex living together in a corresponding relationship.

(5) Subject to subsections (7) and (8) below, for the avoidance of doubt it is hereby declared that in the enactments set out in subsection (6) below, a person living together with another as that other's husband or wife is a member of that other's family and this includes a person living together with another person of the same sex in a corresponding relationship.

(6) The enactments referred to in subsections (4) and (5) above are the Rent Act 1977, the Rent (Agriculture) Act 1976, the Prevention From Eviction Act 1977 and Part VIII of the Local Government and Housing Act 1989.

(7) In Schedule 1 to the Rent Act 1977 references to "member of the family" do not include a person living together with the original tenant as husband or wife for the purposes of that person succeeding the tenant.

(8) In sections 3 and 4 of the Rent (Agriculture) Act 1976 references to "member of the family" do not include a person living together with the original occupier as husband or wife for the purposes of that person succeeding the occupier.").

The noble Earl said: This is another of a series of amendments that deals with succession to tenancies. This point concerns succession to tenancies among same sex couples. When two people live together, care for each other and possibly care for each other through a long terminal illness, it seems extremely harsh that on the death of one party the survivor is thrown out on to the street. I cannot see that this is in the public interest. It is almost always better that survivors of a partnership should be allowed to stay on in the place which they know and with which they are familiar.

The right to succession in tenancies concerns a number of different types of succession. There has been a considerable amount of debate about local authority tenancies. In 1993 in response to a question from my noble friend Lord Falkland, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, said that the Government intend shortly to issue guidance to all local housing authorities. That guidance has just been issued and I welcome it. I am glad to see it.

However, we have also to consider tenancies in the private sector. Those cannot be altered simply by guidance because guidance cannot purchase on the common law of property. In terms of common humanity and common sense it is always a good idea that we should recognise the world as it is. In the world as it is, these are partnerships as in any other partnerships. Therefore, it makes sense that succession to tenancies should happen to them as to any other. I beg to move.

Lord Lucas

We believe quite clearly that what we have set out in guidance is the right approach which is flexible and wide ranging. When the guidance which applies to local authorities through the medium of the tenants' guarantee is reformed—to some extent the provision is there already—it will be applied to Housing Corporation tenants.

In practice, I do not believe that there will be any difference between tenants of a local authority and tenants of a housing association. We prefer to leave the provision the way it is, with discretion in individual cases but very strong guidance as to the principles involved. Not least, I point out to the noble Earl the problems in the particular wording that he has chosen for his amendment; namely, "corresponding relationship" in reference to people living together as man and wife. If a couple happen to be enjoying a platonic relationship it would mean that one could not succeed to the tenancy of the other. That is not a distinction we wish to make in legislation.

Earl Russell

I take the Minister's point about a platonic relationship. The same point had occurred to me. If there is a regular partnership of this sort—and one knows of such—I would go along with the Minister in arguing that they, too, should have claims to succession. I am grateful to him for making that point.

But of course that situation is not unknown inside a legal marriage—as the case of King Edward the Confessor illustrates. I am more interested in probing the Minister's points about the guidance. I am happy with the wording of the guidance that I have in my hand. It states that the local authority should normally grant a tenancy to the remaining person or persons, either in the same home or in suitable alternative accommodation subject to the local authority being satisfied that there are no adverse implications from the joint tenancy for good use of its housing stock and for its ability to continue to provide for housing need.

The Minister will appreciate that a good many of those words cannot apply to the private sector. He is arguing in effect that, because this will become good practice, it will leach out into the private sector in effect by a process of osmosis. He knows that processes of osmosis take time. I should be grateful for a little more explanation as to how he sees this process working—because on how it works a great deal depends as to how satisfied I am with his reply.

Lord Lucas

Clearly we want to be cautious about legislating in this kind of area for the private sector. For instance, the new clause could have unwanted side effects on private sector landlords. It is the Government's policy to encourage the expansion of the private rented sector. To tie extra categories of people into succession rights could give rise to concern on the part of landlords about how easily they could get their property back when required.

We are not convinced of the need to extend these rights to the private sector in the way the amendment suggests. I am quite happy to have a conversation with the noble Earl about the matter, preferably at a more civilised time of day. However, I am sure that he will understand that that is our position at the moment.

Earl Russell

I take the Minister's point about a more civilised time of day. In the light of that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 201 agreed to.

Clause 202 [Minor definitions: general]:

Lord Lucas moved Amendment No. 276:

Page 114, line 24, at end insert— (""enactment" includes an enactment comprised in subordinate legislation (within the meaning of the Interpretation Act 1978);").

The noble Lord said: I spoke to this amendment with Amendment No. 120. I beg to move.

On Question, amendment agreed to.

Clause 202, as amended, agreed to.

Clause 203 [Extent]:

[Amendments Nos. 276ZA to 276ZAB not moved.]

Clause 203 agreed to.

Clause 204 [Commencement]:

[Amendments Nos. 276A and 276B not moved.]

Lord Lucas moved Amendment No. 277:

Page 115, leave out lines 24 and 25.

The noble Lord said: I spoke to this amendment and to Amendment No. 278 with Amendments Nos. 251 and 254A respectively. I beg to move.

On Question, amendment agreed to.

Lord Lucas moved Amendment No. 278:

Page 115, line 25, at end insert— ("section 87 (provision of general legal advice about residential tenancies),").

On Question, amendment agreed to.

Clause 204, as amended, agreed to.

Remaining clause agreed to.

House resumed: Bill reported with amendments.