Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 112: 112: Clause 68, page 44, line 12, leave out ““and”” The noble Lord said: I have a series of short probing amendments in relation to Clause 68, which defines ““rent””, and Clause 69, which deals with the recoverability of rent. I can be extremely brief in presenting the amendments. On Amendments Nos. 112 to 115, as I understand it, existing distress for rent rules allow for the recovery of money owed for more than simply rent payments. In many cases, as the Minister well knows, leases for rent include service charges along with a payment for use and possession. Inclusive rents, which cover all payments between tenant and landlord and have been actively encouraged by the Government, make commercial leases simpler and have been fairly widely adopted by the industry. In many cases it would be extremely difficult to work out the split between rent for use and possession on the one hand and the service charge on the other. As in the case of existing procedures, it should be possible for landlords to recover all the money owed. Amendment No. 116 seeks to remove the requirement for net unpaid rents to meet a minimum amount at two stages and replaces this with a single cheque. Requiring unpaid rent to meet a minimum amount at two stages is likely to prolong the CRAR process and means that it would be more likely to be unsuccessful. If at the second stage of the process set down in the Bill the unpaid rent does not meet the minimum amount, the landlord will have incurred costs from the first stage without an effective remedy. Therefore, without a simplification of the procedure at this stage and a reduction in the number of conditions imposed on landlords, the CRAR process could be, in practice, unworkable. Finally, I turn to Amendment No. 117. If a prescribed minimum amount is to be introduced, it should be a reasonable amount where the landlord does not suffer hardship as a result of unpaid arrears. This is paramount as the non-recovery of quarterly payments, which are the norm in commercial leases, may lead to landlords defaulting on their own finance payments. I beg to move.