I am grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is a shame that the debate clashes with the first day of the Cheltenham festival, but that is a hardship we shall have to bear. Anyone who has their doubles and trebles might like to know that Ruby Walsh and Willy Mullins have won three of the first four races today.
3.30 pm
I am still bemused at the fact that we are dealing with a last-minute amendment on retaliatory eviction in what is supposed to be a deregulation Bill. The Minister said earlier that he would not accept an amendment because it went against the spirit of a deregulation Bill, yet here he is promoting a new regulation. I am struggling to understand how Lords amendment 18 has anything to do with deregulation. My amendments certainly try to keep to the spirit of the Bill by reducing some of the over-regulatory interventions that the Lords amendment would bring about.
It was no accident that I was so keen to scrutinise the earlier incarnation of these changes in the Tenancies (Reform) Bill, which was brought forward by the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather). I am glad that I did, because its provisions were wide-ranging and, as far as I could see, were an attempt to deal with a problem—there was no evidence that it was as widespread as she claimed it to be—by inadvertently penalising good, normal landlords at the expense of bad tenants. In fact, not only was there no evidence to suggest that there was a big problem, but there was evidence showing that it was a very small problem.
Some people would love us to buy into the illusion that all landlords are bad and all tenants are good. There might be good and bad landlords, but the truth is that there are also good and bad tenants, and we should not forget that. There are already grey areas of law over these matters. John Midgley, to whom I pay tribute, is the enfranchisement and property litigation partner at Seddons solicitors. He acts for landlords and tenants alike and has been helpful to me in talking through some of these issues. One of his concerns is that these proposals could yet again have unintended consequences. In fact, the principle of an amendment that I tabled to this Bill at an earlier stage was accepted by the Government after the superstrike case, where the courts had ruled in a way that was contrary to what many thought were the real intentions of the original legislation. The clarification was required because the legislation was not clear enough and all the eventualities had not been covered sufficiently.
Through these amendments and what is said in this debate we have a chance to make Parliament’s intentions clear. We can then avoid the need for this regulation to be revisited simply because it is not clear enough that the intention is not to penalise good landlords. I am grateful that the Minister, from what I could tell, was
keen to say that the purpose of these Lords amendments, as far as the Government were concerned, and the basis on which they would accept them, was that good landlords would not be penalised.
Let met turn to the detail of my amendments. I was rather disappointed when the Minister highlighted how little he knew about retaliatory eviction, because he seemed to be drawing numbers from thin air for the number of such evictions. When the hon. Member for Brent Central introduced her Bill, she did so on the basis that there were 200,000 such evictions a year. We then got into a bidding war with a Lib Dem peer saying that the legislation was vital because there were 300,000 such evictions each year. Now the Government say that as far as they are concerned there are 80,000. People are just making up numbers willy-nilly.
Fortunately, the evidence is all there in the English housing survey, which shows why people are evicted from their properties. It makes it abundantly clear that 81% of tenants leave of their own free will, 10% go by mutual agreement and just 7% are asked to leave by the landlord. Of that 7%, 57% are asked to leave because the landlord wants to sell the property, 10% because of non-payment of rent and 35% for other reasons. I went to the people who conducted the survey to ask what those other reasons were—I do not suppose anybody else bothered—and I was told that the numbers were too small to be broken down further, but they included: difficulties with the payment of housing benefit; landlords being dissatisfied with how the accommodation was being looked after; landlords receiving complaints from neighbours; and—this was the last one—tenants complaining to the landlord about problems with the property. Even if we take all the other reasons, 6,000 is the maximum possible number of evictions there could be and it is perfectly clear from the English housing survey that the figure is much lower than that. We are told that the provisions are absolutely essential because there are 200,000 cases a year, but that is not so. At most, there are a few thousand.
I am not defending any landlord who acts in an irresponsible manner and tries to kick out tenants simply because they have complained about their accommodation. I would never defend that; that is unjustifiable. However, we should at least have on the record the true scale of the problem, rather than numbers people have invented. If people want to act on the basis of the actual numbers, let them make their case—I have no problem with that—but please let us not have people justifying action based on fantasy numbers they have just plucked out of thin air, and the Government going along with it. That is not the basis for legislating in this House, and it is rather disappointing that the Government have resorted to using what they must know, in their heart of hearts, are bogus figures.
The whole point of this provision is to deal with the very small numbers of people who are evicted because they asked for a repair to be done. Surely, therefore, the emphasis of the legislation should be on getting the repair done. Currently, it is possible to evict tenants because they have asked for a repair to be done. The amendment from the other place seems to take an almighty sledgehammer to crack a tiny nut. It says that the landlord will not be able to evict a tenant for six months following the issue of a relevant notice. That is clearly completely over the top and it messes dangerously
with the concept of no-fault evictions. We are talking about six-month tenancies here, and to give the tenant the equivalent of a whole free tenancy, even though the repair may have been dealt with, is crazy. Why not five months? Why not four months? Why not seven months? The landlord may already have been unable to issue a notice for some time at that point, meaning that they would not have been able to evict for that period, however long that was, plus the six months referred to here and the two-months’ notice period. That is an absolute minimum of eight months.
To those who say that the Lords amendment is to protect tenants from being evicted as soon as the repair has been carried out, I would say this. First, it is hardly likely that landlords, for no good reason, would spend the money to carry out a repair at their own expense and then evict a rent-paying tenant, with all the associated costs and risks that that would entail. That would be crazy.
Secondly, let us remember that a tenancy is a contract and must work both ways. In law, when tenants want to leave the property after the agreed time, they just leave. In theory, they pay their last month’s rent, hand over the keys, get their deposit back, or part of it, and walk away. They abide by the terms of the lease for the notice period and then they are free to go. In fact, even if they do not pay their rent, they often just leave and it is then up to the landlord to decide what, if anything, to do to try to recover the money owed to them. They do not need to give a reason for leaving or to justify it to anyone, and nor should they. However, according to the English housing survey, 80% of private renters who moved in the past three years said they had moved because they wanted to move, so most people are walking away when they have chosen to do so.
Thirdly, there could a situation where two things happen completely coincidentally. I do not believe that the Bill has considered this genuine possibility carefully enough. I will come on to my grave concerns about this later, but I will say for now that it is perfectly possible that shortly after a tenant raises a repairing issue, a landlord genuinely needs to get their property back. If the two Lords amendments relating to this issue are accepted, it would limit any additional damage caused in such cases by lifting the random six-month bar on the service of a section 21 notice.
Fourthly, the proposal would create a perverse situation whereby a landlord who deals with the problem is treated just as badly as a landlord who does nothing until the eleventh hour, presumably after much inconvenience to the tenant. I do not see the logic of penalising both and disincentivising a good landlord from carrying out what we would expect from a good landlord.
For those reasons, I do not believe that the law needs changing. As it happens, that was the view of the previous Labour Government when they considered this matter. I think that was perfectly reasonable. That has been the view of every previous Government. It was the view of the Communities and Local Government Committee, with a Labour chairman, when it looked at this issue. It recommended against making any changes to the law on this area. So it is not as if I am a lone ranger on this; the opinion I am arguing for today has always been the consensus opinion.
My amendments are a compromise between those keen to do something about a problem that apparently exists and the kind of gesture politics that will actually damage the condition of rental properties and the market generally. Under my amendments, as soon as the repair has been completed, the landlord and tenant would be in the position they would have been in but for the repair issue. In other words, the landlord could give the tenant two months’ notice to leave under section 21, as they could have done had no repair been needed, which seems to be what we are trying to achieve. Currently, the landlord could fail to make the repairs and evict the tenant. Under my proposal, they would have to make the repair so that the tenant could live in the property with the repair completed, and if the landlord then chose to give two months’ notice, the tenant would get the benefit of the repair in the meantime. I see no justification for the Lords amendment, and I had hoped that my compromise amendment would be substituted, but clearly the Government have decided against it, based on what the Minister said earlier, although we did not have much of an explanation why.
My amendment (c) would change “14 days” to “20 working days”. Under the Lords amendment 18, the landlord has 14 days to respond to the tenant’s initial complaint. Given that under the Bill a failure to do so will have significant legal implications, it seems to me that 14 days is a rather short period, bearing it in mind that people are entitled to holidays and could be ill—if somebody went on holiday for two weeks, they would be completely snookered under the Lords amendment. Also, I am told that the proposal does not match up with the pre-action protocol on disrepair claims under the civil procedure rules. If there is already a good legal precedent for the time scale of 20 working days, it seems more reasonable and practical than 14 days and should be the benchmark, rather than a random number of days.
On amendments (d) and (f), the Residential Landlords Association, which I have been in touch with, is rightly concerned that the Bill does not provide for a moratorium preventing a local authority from taking action. A local authority can still serve a statutory notice on the landlord, even if the landlord is dealing with the complaint responsibly, as the law asks them to do. It points out that the Bill has consequences for such a landlord. The solution would be the addition of the provision that so long as the landlord replies in time and in an adequate way, the local authority is precluded from serving a statutory notice, unless the landlord fails to carry out the work on time, subject to an extension of time for good reason. That is what my amendments seek to achieve.
I tabled amendment (e), to leave out subsection (5), because it seemed odd to have a proposal for dealing with retaliatory eviction even where the tenant did not communicate with the landlord about the repair issue. Surely it can only be a retaliatory eviction if the landlord evicted a tenant knowing there was a problem. Under subsection (5), the provisions can be applied even if the landlord did not know there was a repair issue. How on earth that qualifies as a retaliatory eviction the Lord only knows. Under the Lords amendment, a tenant can rely on the retaliatory eviction provisions even if they have been unable to contact the landlord. If the tenant is paying their rent, they will have at least one means of contacting the landlord—through paying their rent—so I believe that this strange proviso should be removed.
Similarly, amendment (g) concerns the condition of the dwelling house, as it is called in the Lords amendment. As with the previous point, there is no explanation of what is meant by “condition of the dwelling house” when a tenant initially writes to the landlord. The Government might say that that is dealt with where the Lords amendment mentions the tenant’s making a complaint to the “relevant local housing authority” about the same, or substantially the same, subject matter as the complaint to the landlord. I point this out merely to ensure there can be no misunderstandings and that the condition of the dwelling house cannot, for example, include a broken light bulb or the like. We should all be clear that the intention of the Bill is that it refers to a relatively serious problem that needs fixing, not to the fact that a light bulb has gone and nobody has gone round to fix it, enabling the tenant to abuse the Bill for some trivial purpose. As things stand and as the legislation is written, there is no real defence for the landlord. I hope that the Minister will at least make clear in the words he uses what the intention behind this legislation is, should a court case come along, and confirm that it is not intended for the trivial matters that I have described.
3.45 pm
Amendments (b), (e), (c) and (d) to Lords amendment 19 make provision for the landlord to be protected from the retaliatory eviction provisions if the house is for sale. I shall come on to that in a minute, but there are other glaring omissions along similar lines. The most important one is where the landlord wants the property back to live in. According to the English housing survey, only 7% of private renters who had moved in the last three years said that their tenancy had ended because they had been asked to leave by the landlord. Just short of six out of 10 landlords in that 7% category wanted their property back either to sell it or use it, so it is important that we get this part right. In my opinion, this amounts to a huge omission.
In one case I came across, a woman had rented out her property in the UK because she had gone abroad with her partner. The relationship broke up and she needed to come back to her home in the UK to live in—a perfectly reasonable position to be in. It is her property, so she should be able to do that. As drafted, however, the Lords amendments would make it very difficult for her to live in her own home for an awfully long period if she needs it back. Some thought should be given in the legislation to such circumstances, which are more common that many people might think, as the English housing survey showed.
There may be circumstances where the landlord wants or even needs to redevelop the property, which might not be possible with a tenant living in it. There may be a compulsory purchase order or a legal duty to complete works, which cannot be done with a tenant in place. Surely, it cannot be right for a landlord to be in breach of other legislation because of unfair restrictions in this legislation, which presumably cannot have been intended.
If the Government will not accept my amendments, can the Minister at least confirm the position in respect of breaching other legislation? Why should people not be able to get their own homes back to live in themselves if they need to? It would be very helpful if the Minister explained that.
I appreciate that I am racing through my amendments, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I am trying to give others the opportunity to get their points across and then to have a Division. Under my amendment (e), retaliatory eviction would not apply in certain conditions. It would depend on the tenant acting in “a tenant-like manner”, on not using the house for “immoral or illegal purposes” and on the absence of any
“indictable offence committed in, or in the locality of, the dwelling-house”.
Another condition is whether the tenant is in prison at the time. I think much of the amendment is self-explanatory, and I like to think that Members will see its obvious merits.
For some reason—I am not sure why, so perhaps the Minister could have a better stab at explaining it—what seem obvious and common-sense amendments dealing with omissions are not going to being accepted. If a tenant has used a property for criminal purposes, it must be right that they are not afforded any additional legal protections to stay there. Surely, that is common sense. Equally, if a tenant is in prison at the time of making a complaint about the property, they should surely not be able to benefit from these Lords amendments.
This is a completely unacceptable way to pass wide-ranging legislation—on the basis of Lords amendments to legislation that has had no previous scrutiny in this place at all. We barely have any time to scrutinise it, and this is when mistakes happen in legislation. That is what happening today, as this is being rushed through in an unsatisfactory manner.
If the tenant has refused access to the landlord, for example, to prevent them from seeing any problems or from doing any repairs, it could hardly be right for the tenant then to benefit from the retaliatory eviction provisions. Nothing in the Lords amendments will deal with that, unless my amendments are accepted. If tenants do not allow the landlord to fix the problem, it should not be possible to protect them from eviction.
On rent arrears, my amendment would provide an effective way to separate good tenants from bad and ensure that good tenants are rewarded, while bad tenants are not allowed to abuse the system. If the rent is not paid, the landlord may well not be able to afford to carry out the necessary repairs. It would be very unfair to penalise a landlord by allowing a non-paying tenant to remain in the property for a further eight months—the extra six months that have been randomly provided, along with the two-month notice period. Indeed, it would be an absolute travesty.
Last year, when we were debating the Tenancies (Reform) Bill—on which these amendments are based—I was contacted by a landlord in my constituency, who wrote:
“I have been a renting landlord for over 30 years with a small portfolio and in that time have served 2 section 21s to tenants. One was a young delinquent male and his parents were involved and were understanding.
The other was a woman who was a long term tenant in a rented house and with whom I had had difficulties for several years collecting rent. When she left eventually there was a CC”
—county court—
“judgement against her for £6,000 arrears. The reason I am elaborating is that in my negotiations with her and her representatives the fabric of the building was brought into the discussions. Her grievances were not justified but if the proposals suggested had
been in force I would have had even more difficulty getting my property back and she may still have been there. I would have had to spend money to deal with the claims she had levied and there would be no guarantee or obligation for her to settle the arrears going forwards. I would have been in a terrible situation.
There does not need to be a change to the current legislation, the section 21 is needed just as it is.”
Amendment (c) would insert in Lords amendment 19 the words
“or where the landlord intends to sell the dwelling house within six months.”
As I have said, when a property is for sale, the landlord is still able to serve a valid section 21 notice. There are myriad exclusions, for reasons that are beyond me, but I shall leave that aside for now. However, the landlord may not be able to put the property on the market until it is tenant-free. The change that I propose would prevent a tenant from making a complaint simply to prevent the property from being sold. I might add that past Governments have always accepted that that is a legitimate reason for the serving of a section 21 notice.
The landlord may not have been aware of the position at the time of the original complaint, but the Lords amendment would prevent him from subsequently selling the dwelling or removing the tenant. That strikes me as a total Catch-22 for landlords, which must surely be an unintended consequence of the legislation as it is currently proposed.
Amendment (d) would insert the words
“at the time the section 21 notice is given the landlord’s reasons for serving the notice are unrelated to the repairing issue.”
As I said earlier, I have grave concerns about what will happen if a landlord genuinely needs his property back and the tenant has, by sheer coincidence, made a complaint about a repair. It seems to me to be only fair to exempt landlords who have a genuine reason and to prevent them from being caught up in this nightmare legislation. Their need for the property to be returned could well have nothing to do with any kind of revenge or retaliation, but they will be caught up in the legislation regardless.
If, by sheer coincidence, the tenant of the woman whom I mentioned earlier, who went abroad and had to return to this country—the tenant had been dealing with managing agents—had given notice of a problem, that woman would not have been able to move back into her property for six months, and, presumably, for a further two months after that. Given that she would be the one moving back at the end of that eight-month period, it could be assumed that she probably wanted the repairs to be carried out. Far from having an interest in not carrying them out, she would have an interest in carrying them out, because she was going to live in the property. Surely, landlords should be protected in circumstances in which they will live in their properties themselves. They clearly will not want to live in a property that is not in a fit state. The Lords amendment would make un upsetting situation even more stressful.
There could also be a problem if someone wanted to move back into a property to be near an ill or dying relative and help with that person’s care. Surely, no one wants to pass legislation that would prevent that from happening. It would be helpful if the Minister made it clear that that is not the intention and that, if there are any claims in the courts, they can take that in consideration when dealing with what is currently very unsatisfactory legislation.
I turn to amendments 21 and 26. On amendment (a) to Lords amendment 21, the proposed burden placed on all landlords, good or bad, is that they are prevented from serving notice under section 21 for the first four months of the tenancy. This could have implications if the landlords then are unable to serve notice on exactly the first day of the fifth month, as they will lose out. Therefore, this amendment reduces that period to two months as a compromise. That would give landlords two months to get their notice in and get their property back after the six months, if that was what they needed, and make things a bit fairer. It also prevents the tenants from having a free four-month period in which to make a repairing complaint when the landlord can do nothing about it—something that, again, seems to be treating landlords as guilty until proven innocent.
My final amendments are amendments (a) and (b) to Lords amendment 26. I believe we have far too much legislation already, so I was pleased to see the Deregulation Bill announced, but as the Government are now using it to introduce more regulation, I am not quite as happy as I was when it was introduced. I suppose that is what happens when we have Liberal Democrats in government, however: a deregulation Bill becomes an extra regulation Bill.
For the reasons I have stated, I believe that it is healthy to have either a sunset clause or, at the very least, a review of this so-called necessary legislation to see what the real effects have been—to see whether any of the fears I am outlining have come to fruition. It would be helpful if the Government agreed that some kind of review will take place, certainly given the unsatisfactory way this extra regulation is being introduced at the last minute. Anyone who is confident that these laws will work well should have nothing to fear from a review. It would give me at least some confidence that the Government have some confidence in their own legislation if they agree to review it to make sure everything is fine.
There is always a danger with such legislation that the more of it there is, the more work will end up in the hands of lawyers and judges trying to deal with the fallout from it. The serving of notices can already be a highly litigious area. I understand there is much case law on the subject of the issuing of notices and this is where the doubt is on the side of the landlord and the side of the tenant.
I am surprised that we are here again today discussing this issue at this stage, as it has been considered on many occasions, and even the Communities and Local Government Committee concluded by saying:
“We are not convinced, however, that a legislative approach is the best or even an effective solution. Changing the law to limit the issuing of section 21 notices might be counter-productive and stunt the market.”
That all-party group—a Select Committee—looked into this in detail and came up with that unanimous conclusion. Yet here we are today completely ignoring all of that wise counsel and having just that kind of interference.
I believe the measures before the House today would tilt the scales unfairly away from the landlord, which, as I have said, could easily put people off renting, so there could be fewer houses to rent. We should not just keep putting up an additional legal hurdle and saying that it is not that big a deal and assuming that everyone will jump it no matter how small the steps are and how much higher we keep building it. There are only so
many hurdles people will be prepared to jump and even accomplished hurdlers like Colin Jackson might feel like giving up if they see the size of the hurdles that the Government are putting in the way of landlords.
I believe that my amendments are more in tune with the spirit of the Deregulation Bill than those proposed by the Lords. I hope that the Minister will think again about these matters, or at least clarify what the Government’s intentions are with this legislation on the points I have raised and agree to the review, which if he has any confidence in the Bill, he will be happy to do.