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Remaining Private Members' Bills
GOVERNMENT POWERS (LIMITATIONS) BILL
Order for Second Reading read.
To be read a Second time on Friday 13 June.
EQUALITY BILL [LORDS]
Order for Second Reading read.
To be read a Second time on Friday 20 June.
Council Tenants (Hammersmith and Fulham)
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Jim Fitzpatrick.]
2.30 pm
Mr. Iain Coleman (Hammersmith and Fulham): I am pleased to have secured today's Adjournment debate to highlight an issue of great interest to many thousands of council tenants and leaseholders in my constituency. It relates to the publication of a report entitled, "Our Community—Our Homes—Our Choice", the launch of which I was delighted to host in the House of Commons on 8 April this year.
The report was produced by the Hammersmith and Fulham housing commission, which the council established in October 2002 to hold an independent inquiry into the future of the 14,000 council homes in the borough, including how best to achieve the decent housing standard. The commission, which comprises 19 tenants, one leaseholder, one councillor and an independent chair, has been a remarkable experiment in tenant participation. I am delighted that many commissioners are present to hear the debate.
Commissioners underwent intense training and spent an estimated 1,500 person hours between them gathering evidence, commissioning independent financial and legal advice, cross-examining in Select Committee style and agreeing their report. The commission studied in great detail. It considered comprehensive financial appraisals of the three main options for the future management of their homes. They were: retention under democratic management; an arm's-length management organisation, known as an ALMO; and a large-scale voluntary transfer and mix-and-match solution—LSVT.
Two important pieces of information are crucial to understanding the context of the commissioners' deliberations. First, Hammersmith and Fulham council's housing management and caretaking service has received the top Audit Commission award of three stars with excellent prospects for improvement. Only one other of the 32 London boroughs received the same award. Secondly, the council and its tenants have worked in partnership for many years to build a comprehensive management service and highly effective tenant participation arrangements.
After six months of consideration, the housing commission was unanimous in all its recommendations. The first, strongly held preference is retention under the direct management and democratic control of the local authority. I shall outline the principal reasons for that decision. First, the local authority provides an excellent service to tenants, as the independent award of the three stars for the caretaking and housing management service recognised. I repeat that that is the highest possible accolade for the service. Secondly, there is a clear, coherent and agreed plan and policy in place to achieve the decent housing standard, subject only to the availability of the necessary resources. Thirdly, it is the commission's clear view that the uncertainty and disruption of an unpopular and unnecessary change will inevitably undermine current focus on service improvement.
The tenants' view was not based on a dogmatic or doctrinal position. There have been direct and indirect stock transfers in Hammersmith and Fulham in recent years. However, despite constant Government soundbites and spin that tenant participation should be the key driving force behind policy, they will not allow tenants to follow that option, which the commission clearly and unanimously selected.
It appears, and this has been confirmed in a letter from Lord Rooker, the Minister for Housing, Planning and Regeneration, dated 8 May to the independent chair of the commission, that the Government have decided that councils keeping their stock without making use of an ALMO, LSVT or private finance initiative option will not receive any additional resources to allow them to meet the Government's own decent housing standards. Indeed, any council that cannot produce a plan showing how it will achieve that standard will be deemed to be failing.
Without those additional resources, it will be necessary to make cuts of 25 per cent. in service to provide enough spare revenue to finance borrowing for the investment required. In practice, therefore, the Government are in my view blackmailing the council and the tenants to go down a route of change in the management of their homes that I am convinced they do not wish to undertake.
So why did the commission reject the other options that were available? The housing commission argues that by far the least worst of the other options available to tenants, other than staying with the council as they wish, is to agree to set up an arm's-length management organisation—an ALMO. Although it is the clear view of the tenants that they will lose some democratic accountability, run the risk of unnecessary disruption to the high quality of service that they get, and spend money unnecessarily in setting up the machinery of an ALMO, it will still allow them to attract the necessary investment to meet the decent housing standards keep their homes in the ownership of the council, and preserve as far as possible the close relationship with the council and its wider strategic functions.
If, as it seems from Lord Rooker's most recent letter, the Government are not prepared to listen to the representations of the tenants, the ALMO is the commission's preferred option. The tenants rejected out of hand the option of a large-scale voluntary transfer, not least because it was their clear judgment, as experienced tenant representatives living locally for many years, that there was no prospect that their fellow tenants in Hammersmith and Fulham would vote for one in the ballot that is currently required by legislation.
The tenants believe that the set-up costs for an LSVT would be unacceptably high. They also recognise that new tenants would be granted an assured tenancy, not a secure tenancy, and that an LSVT would place a barrier between tenants and the council's renewal and regeneration strategy.
I had the privilege of giving oral evidence to the commission, as did 20 other witnesses. Tenants failed to understand why the Labour party, which the overwhelming majority of them have supported loyally in good times and in bad times, is treating them in such a fashion. Many of them feel betrayed and do not understand the reasoning behind the Government's policy and actions.
In their communities plan published in February 2003, the Government proposed new and bold policies for housing, especially in and around London. The plan set out the increased financial incentives—or bribes, as several commissioners have described them to me—for going down particular routes of housing management. In paragraph 1.3 of that document, the Government state:
- "tenants must be at the heart of plans at all stages in the process, starting with drawing up options for investment".
The housing commission report points out that there are a number of reasons why the logic of the Government's own policy should allow tenants a genuine choice based on local factors where there is clear evidence of a high-performing council. The Government are constantly declaring their pragmatic approach to the provision of public services, characterised by the saying, "What matters is what works", yet in Hammersmith and Fulham it is beyond dispute that the current democratic arrangement for the provision of the management of council housing works well.
The Government constantly reiterate their policy of rewarding good performance. Through democratic management, Hammersmith and Fulham has achieved the highest possible standard, as evidenced by its being awarded the highest score in the country in its comprehensive performance assessment, as judged by the Audit Commission, an independent body.
No authority in the UK is better placed to decide for itself, having consulted its customers, whether to retain its housing stock under direct management or to go for an alternative option. However, the Government are, in effect, telling the council and the tenants of Hammersmith and Fulham, "It does not matter about your record on the quality of your service provision. It does not matter what local people want to happen to their homes and their communities. You will go down the route that we dictate or you will lose subsidy. If you lose that subsidy, you will not meet the standards for decent housing, and if you do not meet those standards you will be deemed a failing authority, with all the implications of that assessment."
In his 8 May letter to the independent chair of the Hammersmith and Fulham commission to which I referred earlier, Lord Rooker said that he was pleased that the commission had conducted an appraisal of the options available for the long-term future of council housing stock in Hammersmith and Fulham. He also said that he was pleased that there had been high tenant involvement in the process. However, Lord Rooker went on to say that he did not think that the meeting with him that the housing commission had respectfully requested would be helpful, as the Government were not prepared to consider any exception to the blanket policy set out in their communities plan.
Lord Rooker's refusal to consider the option unanimously agreed by the 19 tenants and leaseholders in the report and, indeed, his refusal even to meet a
delegation from the commission came as a shock and confirmed the worst fears of the members of the commission. Local people undertook a huge exercise, in terms of time and commitment. They gave up their time freely and, as I said earlier, an estimated 1,500 person hours have been ignored by the Government. I should like to take this opportunity to thank all the members of the commission and to congratulate them on their hard work and commitment.Even at this late stage, I ask the Government to think again and to agree to reconsider their position, based on the excellent report that has been produced by the housing commission.
On 3 July 2002, in a speech to the annual conference of the Local Government Association, the Deputy Prime Minister said:
- "The most important performance assessment is, as we know, at the ballot box. The judgment of those we serve is the ultimate test for all of us."
Local people in Hammersmith and Fulham will not easily forget or forgive the manner in which they have been treated on this occasion. It must surely be right that the voice of the local community, so coherently expressed in this excellent report, should be listened to and respected, so I await with interest the response of the Minister.
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