Kate Dearden

I will do my best, Ms Furniss. I congratulate the hon. Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier) on securing this debate on an issue that I know he has campaigned on for a long time, beginning when his party were in government. I really welcome the debate. I am grateful to the many Members who contributed to it for raising their constituents’ concerns and the horrifying cases that they have been dealing with in their constituencies. They set out the serious impacts that incompetent and rogue tradesmen have had on the homes and the physical and mental health of their constituents, who are sometimes elderly or vulnerable in other ways. I know from my own constituents the misery that can be caused and the toll it can take on people, as well as the time and money it takes to remedy problems. I thank Members again for their hard work, through casework and surgeries, to defend their constituents’ consumer rights. Consumers have a have a right to expect that work undertaken in their homes will be performed competently and that there will be redress if the work does not meet acceptable standards of quality and safety, and I want to take the opportunity to assure the House that the Government are committed to strengthening the system to ensure that that happens. I will try to align my winding-up speech with the winding-up speech in the main Chamber and move quickly to responses to points that Members raised. The Government’s aim is to improve the market and to support honest and competent tradespeople and firms, working with the industry and with local authority trading standards. The Consumer Rights Act 2015 sets out the standards that consumers can expect in relation to the supply of goods and services, including building work, and the remedies available to them. Under the Act, traders are required to carry out a service with reasonable care and skill, and within a reasonable time. If those requirements are not met, the consumer can ask for the service to be performed again or for a price reduction. If that is not agreed, consumers can seek redress through the courts. The small claims procedure provides the means to pursue a claim of up to £10,000 at an affordable cost and without a solicitor, and consumers have six years to bring a claim against a trader. Government bodies are also working with the super-sector working groups under the industry competence steering group, collaborating to improve trade and installer competence and to reduce the incidence of poor work. That process brings together over 1,000 individuals across trade bodies, professional organisations and employers to produce and implement competence frameworks across more than 130 occupations. The Government are committed to strengthening competent person schemes that cover higher-risk occupations such as electricians and gas engineers. Competent person schemes must ensure that consumers are provided with the appropriate protection for a minimum of six years to remediate work that is non-compliant with the building regulations. Other protections include the TrustMark scheme, which hon. Members have mentioned. That is the only Government-endorsed quality scheme for domestic construction. It covers trades such as fenestration, roofing, and kitchen and bathroom installation, as well as general building work, and it requires participating firms and tradespeople to demonstrate competence and provide for consumer redress. Government-funded schemes for energy and heat efficiency also require installers to hold relevant certifications and to provide consumers with access to redress. I know that the hon. Member for Wyre Forest has campaigned for a long time on licensing schemes. Licensing or registration schemes exist in the US, Australia and New Zealand and aim to improve quality, protect consumers from incompetent contractors, and provide consumers with redress for poor-quality work. The hon. Member spoke about that in quite a lot of detail. However, few evaluations have been undertaken of the effectiveness of those schemes. The available evidence suggests that they can deliver some benefits, such as increased quality, but that they can also have detrimental effects, including increasing prices for consumers. There is also no clear evidence that the existence of licensing schemes reduces the incidence of poor-quality work. The schemes are reliant on audits and inspections of work to identify incompetent builders, which is similar to the approach of the TrustMark and competent person schemes in the UK. There are also questions of how licensing schemes would be funded and administered, the implications for existing schemes in the UK, and the resourcing of the organisations responsible for the schemes. Any proposal to introduce a licensing scheme in the UK would have to be based on an assessment of costs and benefits and would have to address those issues. Hon. Members also mentioned the issue of phoenixing. We are aware of the problem and work is ongoing. In the 2024 autumn Budget, we announced a greater focus between His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, Companies House and the Insolvency Service on tackling rogue directors and phoenixing. Key actions include closing loopholes in company registration and dissolution, targeted enforcement to boost compliance, and stronger referrals. I thank the hon. Member for Wyre Forest for welcoming our New Homes Quality Board and ombudsman. From a consumer protection perspective, the Government are supportive of alternative routes to recourse outside the courts, such as alternative dispute resolution and the ombudsman. Many similar schemes already exist, and the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 strengthened ADR provision. That is also relevant to his comments and reflections on compensation, for which I thank him. I am very conscious of the time, Ms Furniss, so I will move to my concluding remarks and just thank hon. Members for raising lots of other issues that I do not have time to go through. I will be working closely with other relevant Departments on the wider infrastructure issues that Members have raised on house building.