HIPs sail on as Tories lose Commons vote
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The Conservative Party lost its last-ditch attempt to scupper Home Information Packs after the House of Commons voted against scrapping them last week.
The Tories sparked the debate and subsequent vote in the Commons after tabling a motion calling for HIP regulations to be annulled.
The motion was overturned with 234 ministers voting for it and 306 against it.
Shadow housing minister Michael Gove opened the debate with a warning to the government that it “plays politics with people’s housing at its peril”. He slammed HIPs as botched and offering consumers little value at great expense.
He argued there were fundamental problems with local searches, that the HIP dry runs had not been independent and that Whitehall had been unwilling to listen to the industry.
He even quoted an article by Nick Baxter from last week’s Mortgage Strategy entitled ’We can make money out of HIPs’ as evidence that members of the Association of Home Information Pack Providers were already “salivating at the prospect of extra cash”.
Gove apparently later apologised for this as Baxter is not a representative of AHIPP.
Housing minister Yvette Cooper ar-gued for the environmental benefits that Energy Performance Certificate would deliver and said the Tories’ anti-HIP agenda showed that the “huskies have just cocked their legs on the party’s environment policy”.
She adds: “This is a good measure and should be implemented. The Conservatives should back it now.”
With the government having won the debate, the only question mark remaining is the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors’ judicial review.
In terms of Commons intervention, Mortgage Strategy understands there will be no further challenges.
Neither the Liberal Democrats nor the Conservatives plan further interventions, because as one industry source puts it: “Neither party wants to be responsible for the scrapping or delaying of EPCs, which would occur if HIPs are delayed.”
The House of Lords is meeting this Tuesday to debate a motion to revoke HIPs until there is further consultation. However, this is non-binding, so even if the Lords backs the motion, the government can effectively ignore it.
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