My Lords, we have a number of amendments in this group: Amendments 56B, 56D, 56G, 87A and 89. As other noble Lords have said, there must be a pilot. I was glad to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, say that she has come to the view that it should be a single pilot. However, like her, I agree that there is a world of difference between a pilot and phasing the rollout. I have a number of probing amendments in this group and some in later groups. I will deal with particular concerns amendment by amendment rather than speaking generally to the clause stand part.
On the pilot issue, in my mind this is not probing but something that has to happen, and in a single area. We are not talking about different housing markets; all noble Lords who spoke about this are concerned about what I wrote down as “bureaucracy”, although “administrative burden” is the politer way of putting it, is it not? Concerns were also expressed about discrimination and how landlords, tenants, agents, occupants—people who are not tenants in the sense in which we normally technically use that term, but who are actually tenants under the Bill as they are defined—would cope. We are also concerned about tenants and occupants who have a right to be in this country and to rent. “Workability” was the term used, which is very much in my mind. I will not take up the Committee’s time by quoting from evidence to the Public Bill Committee in the Commons, but I, like others, was struck by the sheer number of small landlords there are in this country.
We talked about a pilot, and that pilot needs to be assessed. Of course the public response to a pilot will be the overall assessment, but it occurred to me that we need a more rigorous critique, being clear and careful about the factors to be assessed and evaluated. Our Amendment 56G would require a report before the provisions come into force about the matters which should be assessed and the basis for evaluating their assessment. I have not attempted to spell those out at this point; that is a piece of work that needs to be quite careful and detailed, to be subject to discussion and to be discussed. I have said that a report should be laid before Parliament by your Lordships. I also agree that the code, which must seek to ensure against discrimination, should have parliamentary involvement.
On Amendment 56B, the dangers of discrimination are inherent—that is an issue in itself—also because of the implications for those who are entitled to be in the country and to rent, as well as for everybody else.
Your Lordships will understand that with a name like Hamwee and coming from the background that I do, I knew people whose names were not familiar to landlords when people of my generation were seeking to rent. Unlike the experience of the noble Lord, Lord Patel, when they turned up on the doorstep they were greeted with, “Oh gosh, you’re white!” That is just as bad a discrimination, of course.
I think that there should be a review following the pilot—that may be implicit in Clause 28, but I think that we should say so—and parliamentary process for each revision. Our Amendments 56B, 87A and 89 are not just little wrinkles at the end of the Bill but amount to a substantive amendment to require clear stages to the process. I can also see that we should consider a mechanism for Parliament requiring a view if that is not a review forthcoming from the Home Office, although I thought of that only yesterday.
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The response of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee has already been mentioned. It considered that the consultation proposed by the Bill would be insufficient for one specific reason, among others—that a breach of the code may be taken into account by the court or tribunal.
The question of bringing the code to the attention of landlords and agents has also been mentioned. Our amendment is very similar to Labour’s Amendment 56C, but I think it is slightly more demanding; I suspect that we put them down at the same time. I am less sanguine than the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, about the dissemination and communication of this measure, and I want by this amendment to probe how the Government think that people can be made aware of it, as well as compliance being ensured. If you are faced with a fine of £3,000 for getting it wrong, that is quite an incentive not to accept as a tenant someone who, you might find, has made you get it wrong. The stereotypes and prejudices are really very obvious; it is perfectly clear that, in this company and this Committee, I do not need to labour the point, but if there is to be an incentive not to let there must be an incentive not to discriminate.