My Lords, I will just pick up on one or two things. Before I do so, hearing other people’s declarations of interests, particularly that of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, makes me realise that mine on Monday was perhaps a little light, although it is in the register. I am a co-owner of let residential and commercial property, but nothing of the nature of long-leasehold flats—they are all individual houses.
The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, raises an absolutely crucial point: the magistrates’ court is too small a threat. It does not have the technical knowledge, and I do not believe it has the capacity either, to deal with it. This threat will simply be laughed at. It really has to have much more meat than that, whether it is through the court process—which I am always a little
reluctant about—or through what is proposed in the third group of amendments later on, and in particular my amendments, which obviously take a different tack on how to establish liability. I very much support what he said there.
1.30 pm
I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Best, for what seems like a lifelong battle to get this new homes ombudsman into place. I really think that he deserves every credit for having done that. He is right to say that the risk is that an ombudsman does not have the teeth and the powers to deal with the matter. As a recent example—this is nothing to do with building but is a matter of planning procedure—my wife decided to complain to the local authority, and the thing finally ended up with the ombudsman. Would you believe it? The ombudsman said they had no jurisdiction to deal with the matter because she personally had not suffered an injury—but the fact that this was a piece of sleight of hand at the expense of society within that district makes me realise that there are some serious loopholes. Look at some of the other regulators and ombudsmen who are supposed to protect us, the citizens; they do not have the powers.
I am concerned with a little thing referred to as industry standard. Industry standard in housebuilding has gone up in certain respects—for instance, on insulation, conservation, heat and power, and that sort of thing—but in other respects it has significantly deteriorated. I had an old friend staying the night before last. He told me about something near where he lives, on a very large estate on the outskirts of a city down in the West Country, where complaints about quality—about the tinsel and cardboard with which these things have been constructed—are reaching epidemic proportions.
I really worry about that, particularly on issues such as noise. Noble Lords would not believe the number of people who complain about acoustic interference. They are in a flat and can hear the chap’s toaster pop on the floor above or the music from the person down below. These things should not happen. There are regulations in force in relation to noise, both percussive and airborne. It is not being dealt with. Part of it is a management attitude to dealing with complaints and getting it right. You kick it down the road until it has gone past the two-year period, and hopefully—heigh-ho—you get away scot free. That must not persist.
The noble Lord, Lord Best, is absolutely right that the warranty period is inadequate. He used the analogy, I think at Second Reading, that you get a better warranty with a car. Yes, indeed. You get a 10-year bodywork warranty with most of them nowadays, never mind anything else. With the greatest respect to him, six years is absolutely the rock bottom that it should be.
I was interested that the Minister touched on this business of people who are lawbreakers. They are: they are gaming the system, they are profiteers and market fixers. These are not people who are going to rightly comply with soft-touch regulation and controls. These very substantial companies make large profits, often on things such as Help to Buy, and in many instances they parcel out eye-watering bonuses to their
senior executives. Meanwhile, those whom they have short-changed in the market for housing have a warranty that I am inclined to refer to as being less useful than the one you get with a pop-up toaster. They are living in comfort while, out there in the rest of the world, hundreds of thousands of people have to put up with serious defects.
These provisions really want tightening up. I am glad that the Minister recognises that this is a problem, because I think we are all on the same hymn sheet here. We want to sort this out. There are people producing a product and people who are consumers of it, and it just so happens that in a large number of cases they are people in their own homes. We need to get this sorted. That is why I support the amendments in the name of the noble Lords, Lord Blencathra and Lord Best. I will not say anything about the Minister’s amendments because that would take me too long. On the whole, they appear to be technical and tidying-up amendments, and I am happy with that.