Mortgage Repossessions (Protection of Tenants Etc.) Bill

I am not in the habit of guessing—I will leave that to others, who can do so in Committee. In fact, the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government was ahead of the organisations I mentioned. A report published on 24 February 2009 identified the issue and called on the Government to produce guidance to stipulate how lenders should act when tenants are discovered in a property that they are repossessing. In addition, the Department for Communities and Local Government ministerial postbag started to receive details of individual cases in which tenants were suffering from eviction at very short notice as a result of landlord repossession. Common themes included the lack of information available to the tenant, the complaint that no one would listen to tenants, and tenants' great distress at needing to find an alternative home so abruptly. The hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) alluded to the fact that some tenants find out that a property is being repossessed without being told themselves, which I do not advocate. Clearly, that situation did not seem right and needed investigating. As a result, my right hon. Friend the Member for Derby, South (Margaret Beckett) announced on 13 May 2009 the Government's commitment to legislate at the earliest opportunity to provide better protection for tenants in repossession cases. As my hon. Friend already mentioned, the Department issued a consultation over the summer, "Lender repossession of residential property: protection of tenants", to which there were more than 30 responses. The responses recognised that short-notice eviction was a very real issue. There was equal recognition that action needed to be taken. I am pleased that a large number of local authorities responded to the consultation. They were extremely supportive of the need to ensure that tenants in that situation were given adequate notice to find alternative accommodation, and cited recent examples of properties being repossessed when tenants were living there. The problem is real and it has real consequences for people's lives. It would be remiss of me not to mention the lender sector, which also responded to the consultation document, either directly or via representative bodies such as the Council of Mortgage Lenders, which the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) mentioned, the Building Societies Association, or the Financing and Leasing Association.