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Housing Corporation (Delegation) etc. Bill

I am delighted to have been called in this debate as the Housing Corporation and the housing associations and registered social landlords that it oversees have a major impact on the lives of my constituents. According to the last census, 13.5 per cent. of Hammersmith and Fulham residents rent a property belonging to a housing association or another RSL, which is more than twice the national average. It is one of the highest rates in the United Kingdom, especially for a local authority that has not yet undertaken any significant large-scale voluntary transfers. Our most important housing associations in Hammersmith and Fulham include the Notting Hill Housing Group, the Peabody Trust, and the Shepherds Bush Housing Association. Each has more than 1,000 housing units. The Notting Hill group alone has more than 4,000 homes in Hammersmith and Fulham. We have 49 different housing associations operating in all. The main RSL that will feature in my speech is the Notting Hill Housing Group. It has treated many of its tenants dreadfully in the recent past, and I wish to discuss the Bill’s impact on them. Many tenants were treated so badly that they became activists in the general election for me last year, knocking on doors, stuffing envelopes and so on. In fact, they are the original Notting Hill Tories, converted to the blue cause not by lizards changing colour, as one sees on ridiculous Labour party leaflets, but by finding a candidate who takes an interest in their problems and complaints. We all share an interest in seeing the Housing Corporation and housing associations operating effectively, so I welcome in general the Bill’s provisions. However, I believe that we need a larger debate on the future of social housing and housing associations in general, and the Bill therefore represents something of a missed opportunity. Given the demand in the House for more discussion of these issues, it seems a great pity that a whole day of Government time has been allocated to debating essentially one paragraph of a technicality, even if it is an interesting technicality. I mentioned to many housing association tenants in Hammersmith and Fulham that this debate was coming. Certainly, a number are concerned that previous decisions made by the Housing Corporation may not have been legally valid. Equally, a number are interested in an opportunity to see some of those decisions reversed. So this kind of bureaucratic mistake does not reflect well on our public institutions, including Parliament, which passed the Bill in the first place. I want to talk about some of the missed opportunities in the Bill, but first I want to mention its shocking cost—£1.50 for only 22 lines is the price recorded on the reverse by The Stationery Office, which represents incredibly poor value for money. The first problem is the poor accountability of housing associations. The Bill is all about accountability, so this is indeed a missed opportunity. Let us contrast housing associations with councils as landlords. I am disappointed that the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) has departed because I want to say something about council management of homes. The council has an advantage in being directly accountable in that it is, of course, elected. Obviously, it is not only its tenants who vote in council elections, but no candidate or local councillor can afford to ignore the voice of council tenants. In many London boroughs, the marginal wards can almost be defined as those that have a sizeable number of council tenants. In the borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, the ward in which I live—Fulham Broadway—is a key marginal, largely because of the presence of the Clem Attlee estate, which is mostly council-owned. One of the most influential people in the borough is Val Barker, who chairs the Clem Attlee Rocque and Maton residents association, which she does very well, taking scrupulous care to remain politically neutral. Her voice is influential, but she does not have a powerful equivalent in neighbouring registered social landlord estates. We therefore need to do more to improve tenant involvement and RSLs’ accountability to tenants. Council officers effectively deal with day-to-day matters on council estates, including repairs, the collection of refuse, the investigation of antisocial behaviour reports and so on. Most council tenants know that if things do not go well, they can call or contact their councillor. In turn, the council officer has a constitutional duty to address practical concerns by listening to the councillor, at the very least. That is not categorically not the case for housing associations. Better housing associations listen to cases brought by individual councillors, but many do not do so and go out of their way to obstruct councillors’ inquiries. To return to the Housing Corporation, such political influence is not afforded to housing association tenants. By contrast, private sector tenants, who lack council tenants’ political clout, often have a more responsive landlord. We have all dealt with hundreds of cases in our constituencies involving nightmare private landlords. In my experience, however, I receive far fewer complaints about private landlords than about RSLs or the council, which leads me to conclude that private sector landlords are usually more responsive to problems and complaints.