My Lords, I speak in favour of Amendment 58, which I put my name to, moved by my noble friend Lady Hamwee. I draw the Committee’s attention to my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.
I reiterate what my noble friend Lady Hamwee just said: history is important. The catalyst for licensing HMOs in this country was a fire in 1981 in which eight individuals were killed and 100 residents of 56 bedsits were affected. Those who survived and those who died were all asylum seekers. That was the catalyst for the HMO licensing regime. That is where the campaign really started. The key issue for the introduction of the HMO licensing was to allow local authority housing enforcement teams to hold HMO landlords in their area to account for providing national minimum standards, and for local authorities to know exactly where HMOs were, so that they could be inspected effectively.
When the statutory instrument was in Grand Committee, the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, was very reassuring in telling the Committee that this had nothing to do with the dilution of standards and that it was all about speed to get houses for asylum seekers ready to go so that they could be housed. Speed can and does cut corners. It became quite obvious from the written answers we received to our questions in Grand Committee that the standards will be watered down, and in some cases will now be dangerous and potentially lead to fires and other issues that could cause fatalities. These are standards for homes, not houses but homes, for some of the most vulnerable people in the world.
There were 11 standards raised in Grand Committee, which included everything ranging from the electrical compliance of equipment to HMO landlords being fit and proper persons for those properties. Of the 11 standards, only one is either equivalent or better than the HMO licensing conditions. All the others are a dilution of the standards. For example, the licensing of HMOs minimum standards state that the electrical appliances and furniture supplied by the landlord must be maintained in a safe condition and that a
declaration of safety for all electrical appliances and furniture must be supplied on demand by the authority. However, the Home Office equivalent asylum accommodation and support services contract states only that electrical appliances are required to be inspected once every five years. It says nothing about the condition of furniture.
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On the condition of carbon monoxide safety, the HMO licensing scheme says that a carbon monoxide alarm is required to be installed in any room in the house that is used wholly or partly as living accommodation and contains a fixed combustible appliance other than a gas cooker, that alarms must be kept in working order, and that a declaration of the condition and positioning of smoke and carbon monoxide alarms must be provided to the authority on demand. However, the provision in the Home Office contract is just that a carbon monoxide alarm is required in a property that has a solid fuel or gas appliance. It says nothing about how they are monitored or positioned. Again, this is a very serious watering-down of house safety and standards.
Other questions were asked and the Written Answers that followed showed very little concern for the safety of the people who will be in these unregistered and unlicensed houses.
The Home Office, in trying to placate the Grand Committee, said it is doubling the number of people in its inspection team for monitoring Home Office properties as part of the contract. I asked what the new full-time equivalent number would be and how many, on average, would be available for each local authority area. The answer came back that the number would be doubling —no numbers, just doubling. If you have one and you get two, the number has been doubled. I expect the team to be more than one at present, so again I ask Minister what the number of full-time equivalent members of the team will be once it has doubled. Also, what is the average number for each local authority?
Another question asked at Grand Committee was whether the inspectors who go into these properties were independent of the Home Office. This is important, because the HMO licensing authority is an independent local authority that goes in with professionals who have absolutely no connection at all to the landlords. Are the inspectors who go into these properties independent of the Home Office? I am sure that noble Lords will not be surprised to hear that they are not independent of the Home Office; they are employed by and are part of the Home Office.
My noble friend Lady Hamwee raised concerns about unscrupulous landlords. These are not my words but the words of experts in the property field, who say that unscrupulous landlords will no longer wish to see themselves as part of a HMO licensing inspection and will just offer their properties, at a lower standard, to the Home Office for asylum seekers.
Noble Lords who spoke about this in Grand Committee were uneasy about the SI’s intentions and its implications. The answers that we have received mean that these regulations need to be repealed as a matter of urgency. Remember that HMO licensing came in because of the tragic deaths of eight asylum seekers. With the latest comments over the weekend
from certain Home Office Ministers about the living conditions of people seeking asylum, with up to four people having to share each hotel room, it is clear that the Home Office cannot be trusted with the safety and dignity of those seeking asylum and their having safe, habitable accommodation. HMOs, regardless of who is living there, need to be safe and to be inspected by an independent local authority licensing scheme. That is why this statutory instrument should be repealed.