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Housing and Regeneration Bill

I, too, shall be brief, although these are large matters that affect huge numbers of people. I believe that I am still the Member of Parliament who represents the largest number of council tenants—about 40,000—who live in some two thirds of all the homes in my constituency. A further 10,000 people in my constituency have bought under the right to buy and are leaseholders of the council, so they, too, have a council interest. I wish to discuss the amendments and new clauses relating to those two groups. I wholeheartedly endorse new clause 1 and new clause 8, which has just been discussed by the right hon. Member for Oldham, West and Royton (Mr. Meacher). The regime affecting councils and their council housing stock continues to be nonsensically unfair and unreasonable. It is not justifiable not to have a level playing field whereby the money put in can be put back into the housing stock for which it is raised. Where the tested democratic wishes of the tenants, plus their elected representatives, want council housing to continue, the Government cannot have it both ways—they cannot say that they believe in the devolution of decision making and then force other outcomes and fiddle the financing to make things much more difficult, as the right hon. Gentleman made clear. Southwark council has resisted all attempts to force stock transfer and will go on resisting them even if it has to raise its own capital to do so. If the Government ever insisted on forcing us or trying to force us, we would go to court to challenge them. I am advised by colleagues that that would be the approach. The Liberal Democrats are the majority party in the joint administration, but that is the view of all four parties with elected representatives on the council—the Liberal Democrats, the Labour party, the Conservative party and the Green party. Secondly, I am surprised that the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Wright), who understands council housing matters from events in his own constituency and the history of the north-east, has not managed to persuade the Government that their policy in this area has been flawed and that we need a regime, such as that proposed in new clause 1, tabled by the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell), which would ensure that the decision-making processes are fair, transparent and not rigged against the interests of tenants. I shall leave others to make that case. Many colleagues are, in general terms, part of a movement called ““Defend Council Housing””, and they believe that council housing was, is and will continue to be a good thing. The first council housing in England was in my constituency, too. It was built by a very eminent MP, Dr. Salter, who was originally a Liberal and then a member of the independent Labour party, and his colleagues in Wilson grove in Bermondsey. It is still there. People want to live in it. It is decent housing, built in the 1920s. Many other places followed that tradition—it is a 20th-century version of the social housing tradition set by some housing associations, of which we are very proud. The Government seem to believe that the only happy council tenants live in council estates where every other resident is not a council tenant. That has never been my experience. People are happy to live next to other council tenants. If the management is good, they do not insist that the person next door is an owner-occupier or the tenant of a social landlord or housing association. They are happy that the other people are council tenants as long as the management is good. If management is good, council tenancies are often more popular. People would often rather be a council tenant than a tenant of a housing association, because councils are often much more accountable to their tenants. At least with councils, tenants can kick out the management every four years. I am about to have a meeting with the Guinness Trust. For years, the tenants of Guinness Trust properties in my constituency—one near London Bridge and Guy's hospital at Snowfields, one off the Old Kent road at Pages walk, and one in Kennington—have felt that the service has been lousy and unresponsive. The chief executive comes to meetings. He is a nice man and he makes lots of promises, but he does not deliver on them. The same applies to the Peabody Trust, which is also based in my constituency. It is a good organisation, but often has not delivered. Housing associations, particularly the bigger ones, often fail. That is why council housing is a good thing. I would hope that a Labour Government would share that view. I want to speak briefly about new clauses 29 and 31 and amendment No. 145, which are tabled in my name. The Minister and his advisers will notice that they are familiar. That is because they feature in my Leasehold Reform Bill, which was number 14 in the ballot for private Members' Bills and got off the runway a few weeks ago, when I was able to start Second Reading. If the Minister is not willing to buy these provisions—if I cannot incorporate them into this Bill—I hope that by the end of the next few weeks he will agree to either this wording or some other wording so that my Bill can become law as a complement to this Bill. New clause 29 is simple. It would allow local authorities to set up sinking funds. Councils used to have sinking funds, but they were abolished following a court case. Effectively, we will never again have a communal sinking fund, for all sorts of reasons with which I need not trouble the House. Such a fund is a bit like a piggy bank. People often prefer to put in money up front against the rainy day when they will have to pay money for capital works. The new clause would allow councils to set up sinking funds that were specific to a property. That would mean that the leaseholder could put some money aside so that there was some money in the kitty five years later, when the roof had to be done or the lifts had to be replaced. The provision would be discretionary—the leaseholder would not have to put money into the sinking fund—but it would clarify the uncertainty of the legal provision. Such a provision would be widely welcomed—I have consulted widely on that. More important is new clause 31, which would fundamentally change for the better the way in which leaseholders are consulted about works on their estates. Most leaseholders in North Southwark and Bermondsey are on estates. The Government tell the council that it has to comply with the decent home standard by 2010, and the council says, ““Yes, Government. We are happy to do that.”” The date might slip a bit to 2011 due to the debate about the money. However, the implication is that although the tenant gets the work done at no significant extra cost as it is paid for by the housing revenue account, the leaseholder is billed for the work. They are not against it, but the bill can be very expensive. You may know, Mr. Deputy Speaker, although I do not know what the situation is in your constituency, that the bill for capital works can be as high as £27,000. That can come out of the blue to a pensioner couple with no reserves. The new clause would ensure that the residents and the leaseholders were involved at all stages of the process. Proposed subsection (2), for example, would require consultation by the landlord, the council, with the leaseholders—they are confusingly called ““tenants”” in the Bill and the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, which the new clause would amend—on specifications for any tenders. It would also allow tenants, or a tenants and residents association, to have a counter-proposal considered by the local authority if they were to get support from 25 per cent. of their total number. The council might say, ““We are going to replace all the windows and doors in your tower block.”” If there were support for a counter-proposal that actually the windows did not need to be replaced, just the doors, it would have to be put as an alternative in a ballot. If the counter-proposal were supported by 25 per cent. of the tenants or more, such a ballot would be agreed to. The new clause would require the documents on such matters to be kept and available for at least 10 years. One problem that has occurred, including on the Brandon estate in Walworth, on the Southwark-Lambeth border, has been whether proposals for new windows are acceptable and compatible with the style of the property concerned. That issue can be contentious, and it returns later when an idea is suddenly resurrected. People quite rightly say, ““We want to see the paperwork””—the justification of why the windows need to be replaced. Often, the documents are not available for as long as 10 years. In the life of a leaseholder, 10 years may be quite a short time to be in a property, so the new clause would set a 10-year minimum requirement for keeping the documents. Finally, the new clause suggests that local authorities should be able to set up independent local arbitration tribunals. The leasehold valuation tribunal, which is a national body, is a good thing, but somebody has to pay to have a case there. By definition, as it is national, it is not local. There are some good arbitration bodies—we have a very good mediation service in Southwark—but not every local authority has one. The new clause would allow a local arbitration procedure, so that if there were a dispute between the council and the leaseholders, both sides could agree to the case being resolved locally, at little or no cost. Tribunals would obviously have to be independent, not run by the council. With regard to amendment No. 145, sometimes, understandably, councils have to do things because the Government tell them to. That is okay, if that is what Parliament agrees and gives the Government the power to do. Decent homes policy is one such example. The Labour Government decided that there should be a policy of upgrading all social housing to minimum standards by 2010-11, and I supported them. That might slip slightly, but the principle is good. When that was agreed and imposed, however, there was no consultation with leaseholders about its impact. It is very important that, if the Government initiate a policy, there is consultation with leaseholders about its impact on them, not just on tenants. Tenants and leaseholders would be much better served if the new clauses on their issues were agreed to. You saved the Minister earlier, Mr. Deputy Speaker, from owning up to the fact that the Government have not yet accepted any amendments or new clauses. He has an opportunity to redeem himself, gain credibility and gain love and support from tenants and leaseholders. He can improve the prospects of the Labour party in the elections on 1 May in London and elsewhere. In the end, he can do what is right for tenants and leaseholders by accepting the new clauses. I hope that he will be brave enough to make his name by doing that. If not, I promise him that my Bill will come back in June, and will be back again and again until, eventually, he will have to give in.