Housing and Planning Bill

My Lords, I think I have said what I can say on this matter. I recall legislation that has gone t...

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in today’s debate: the noble Lords, Lord Stunel...

I now have an answer for the noble Lord: it is quarterly.

I thank the noble Baroness. That is interesting and I will reflect on it.

As I said, I will...

Moved by

Lord Best

69C: Clause 78, page 34, line 9, leave out “must” and insert “shou...

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Kerslake is unable to be with us today, but I am grateful to the n...

I am sorry to intervene on the noble Lord, but I wonder if the Minister could indicate at this st...

I have some figures. The Minister has put forward two propositions, one for tenants to pay anothe...

We need to know which one it is because it directly affects people’s incomes. Will the Minister n...

I would suggest that the noble Baroness should do that because otherwise an awful lot of speeches...

My Lords, all I can confirm at this stage is that, as the noble Lord, Lord Best, said, there are ...

I hope I am right in thinking that the Government are minded to choose the lower of these two opt...

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendments 69D, 70E, 76A and 79C in this group. I have already decla...

My Lords, I will speak to this group of amendments, and in particular in support of Amendment 69D...

My Lords, I support Clause 78 not standing part of the Bill, although what I have to say applies ...

My Lords, I support all the amendments in this important group. I shall speak particularly to Ame...

My Lords, I shall comment briefly on this group of amendments on the pay-to-stay extension. There...

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her earlier remarks, which offered at last to provide us with ...

My Lords, the case made by my noble friends Lady Hollis and Lady Lister on this amendment has bee...

My Lords, as we have heard, this group deals with the Government’s extraordinary assumption of po...

My Lords, I said earlier that I wanted to comment on Amendment 81 when it had been spoken to. It ...

My Lords, before I turn to the amendments I want to outline the Government’s latest position on t...

My Lords—

My Lords, perhaps I may finish this statement and then the noble Lord can intervene.

The no...

Just for the avoidance of doubt, when my noble friend referred to the two illustrations on the ta...

My noble friend is absolutely right. I had not realised that I had made that error. At this point...

I think that the noble Lord, Lord Best, said that he thought that the Government were minded towa...

My Lords, I think that the noble Lord spoke in hope rather than anything else. I have not had pri...

I meant on pay to stay.

No, I am afraid not.

Amendments 69D and 76A, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and th...

Can the Minister help me on this? Under UC and so on, we are dealing with real-time information, ...

My Lords, on the interaction between UC and the policy, we are doing as a priority a piece of wor...

Does the Minister therefore not accept that the path that she appears to be going down is individ...

My Lords, I may not have articulated it properly, but that is the very sort of issue that we are ...

I am very grateful, but I remind the Minister that the Equality and Human Rights Commission said ...

I take the point made by the noble Baroness. I can give her that confirmation today.

The no...

Will the Minister answer the direct question I asked of her? Is it true that private companies wi...

The answer is yes. The landlord will collect the information and confirm it with HMRC, which is s...

Having agreed that that is the case, will the noble Baroness confirm that this is the first time ...

My Lords, landlords collect the information and they send it to HMRC. It is not a question of HMR...

I think I heard the noble Baroness correctly, but I might be wrong, when she said earlier that co...

My Lords, I talked about council tenants on higher incomes benefiting from a taxpayer subsidy whe...

Could the noble Baroness specify what form that subsidy takes? Certainly in the local authorities...

As the noble Baroness says, the rents are below the market rent.

What the noble Baroness is saying is that every time private landlords’ rents go up, the subsidy ...

My Lords, I think that we will have to agree to differ. I recognise that there are different opin...

Market rents are artificial. There is nothing God-given about market rents because they are deter...

I am sorry, I thought that the noble Lord was going on to make a speech. The fact is that general...

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have joined in this debate. As has been the patter...

Moved by

Baroness Lister of Burtersett

70: Clause 78, page 34, line 10, at end insert...

My Lords, I rise to move Amendment 70, in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Kennedy of Sou...

My Lords, I shall speak on Amendments 70B and 75B, and in support of the other amendments in the ...

My Lords, I have not been participating in this Bill, but I have presided a few times in my role ...

My Lords, I will be brief. There are a couple of amendments in this group in my name and in those...

My Lords, very briefly I will speak to Amendment 82A, in my name and that of my noble friend Lord...

My Lords, this group of amendments largely looks at conditions of exemption to the pay-to-stay pr...

My Lords, this second group of amendments is concerned mainly with exemptions from the policy and...

Would the effect of encouraging people on higher incomes to buy their houses not be, ultimately, ...

Would the noble Lord please repeat what he has just said?

The Minister has just said that the object of the scheme is to get people with higher incomes to ...

My Lords, that is why we have right to buy and why we have a programme in place to build so many ...

Would the Minister please repeat her statement about the difficulties caused by rents changing as...

I will repeat my statement. Rent setting is usually done around three months before a new rent ye...

Many of the amendments in this group are probing ones and these matters would be better left to r...

My Lords, the Minister has now said twice that, under her proposals, any household paying a highe...

Perhaps I could add one further point. It is perfectly possible to pilot this in a way that would...

I have a final final question for the Minister. She said that the Government are going to discuss...

Perhaps I might make one final comment—it will be my last on this group. Will the Minister agree ...

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, said that I said that higher-income tenants should thi...

With respect, I welcome the fact that discussions are going on. My question was: were there discu...

I will have to get back to the noble Lord on that precise detail. Somebody asked me a fourth ques...

My Lords, a number of different points have been raised in what we call a wide-ranging debate, al...

My Lords, as I said earlier, I will get information about regulations in so far as I can by the e...

My Lords, I think we recognise that the Minister is doing her best to be helpful but does she not...

I am grateful to the Minister. She is clearly trying to be as helpful as she can be, but if we re...

Moved by

Lord Best

70A: Clause 78, page 34, line 10, at end insert—

“( ) These ...

My Lords, Amendment 70A is in my name and those of my noble friends Lord Cameron of Dillington an...

My Lords, I support my noble friend in his Amendment 70A and I echo his words about easing the tr...

My Lords, I shall speak briefly to the amendment as the arguments have been well made by the nobl...

My Lords, I support the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington. The rural situati...

My Lords, I agree with everything that has just been said. One other point might complicate matte...

My Lords, my name is attached to Amendment 79A in this group, along with that of my noble friend ...

My Lords, I raised a number of questions at Second Reading which never got a reply and, as they a...

My Lords, I start by apologising for not having participated in debate earlier, but I was on duty...

My Lords, Amendment 79, which was tabled by my noble friend on the Front Bench, took my eye. It p...

My Lords, could the noble Lord repeat that? I could not quite hear the beginning of what he said....

Amendment 79 states that the definition of high income cannot be set at a level lower than median...

My noble friend is not the only one in danger of losing his train of thought as the Bill goes on ...

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have debated these amendments. I should say to the noble Lo...

I thank the Minister for giving way. We know that appeals procedures usually take several months;...

The intention is certainly not that tenants would pay different levels of rent every month. That ...

My Lords—

My Lords, I am not going to give way.

Most importantly, Clause 83 will give tenants the rig...

What is the latest estimate of the number of households above the £30,000 and £40,000 thresholds?...

My Lords, I have the figure for London, as the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, asked for it. There are ...

And outside London?

I do not know. I will get that figure to the noble Lord.

The Minister just referred to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Bassam; does that not come ...

I did wonder, given that the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, was not in his place. I will just refer to ...

I still have not got the faintest understanding of how pay-to-stay rents will connect with people...

As I think I have said to noble Lords on several occasions, this will be laid out in due course. ...

It is not a detail—it is at the core of local authorities’ ability to handle this scheme.

As I said, details on regulations and timelines will be with noble Lords before the end of the we...

Does it not mean that in effect, there will be year-end rent bills for tenants?

My Lords, that is in the detail.

I am sure the Minister has picked up from the debates on this group and the previous couple of gr...

My Lords, I was simply making the point that there are a high number of households with incomes o...

I get that point, but it is a bit odd that the Bill before us refers to incomes of £30,000 and £4...

The Minister may be coming to this but I asked—as I did at Second Reading and am still waiting fo...

My Lords, I cannot speak for the Government back in 2012 and say how they arrived at their figure...

Can the Minister also let us know what will happen to the threshold in the future? I know that av...

I answered that in responding to a question from the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, about not putting ...

My Lords, I apologise for my delay in rising to speak. I did indeed lead on this amendment, altho...