My Lords, I will confine my remarks to Amendment 50E:
“Protection of tenants against retaliatory eviction”.
As a landlord in the private rented sector, I am firmly against any landlord who engages in such practices as retaliatory eviction. In my 30 years or so of being a landlord, I have never had to resort to issuing—or come close to issuing—a Section 21 notice.
I have three points to make. First, the definition of a retaliatory eviction in this amendment is too broad. It would create massive uncertainty about what is and what is not an unreasonable eviction. A much clearer definition is needed that makes it abundantly clear that it does not include failure to pay rent or committing frequent anti-social behaviour, to give just two examples.
Secondly, we are being asked to agree to this amendment without knowing the extent of the problem. Responding to a Question, my honourable friend Brandon Lewis, the Housing Minister, said that the Government did not hold data on the extent of the problem, and nor did anybody else. That was true until Shelter conducted a YouGov poll that found that just 1% of private sector tenants had been evicted or served with a notice to evict in the last year because they complained to their council about a problem with their home that was not their responsibility. Only 7% of tenancies are ended by landlords, mostly because they need to take possession in order to sell or to move into the property themselves or to undertake refurbishment—or because the tenants are not paying their rent or are committing frequent anti-social behaviour.
My third point is that there are already existing laws in place that give tenants all the protection that they need. In June, the Competition and Markets Authority issued guidance on the relationship between landlords and tenants. This guidance states that, under the terms of the Unfair Trading Regulations 2008, derived from the Consumer Protection Act, it is a breach of these in the case of,
“any commercial practice that, in the context of the particular circumstances, intimidates or exploits consumers such as to restrict (or be likely to restrict) their ability to make free or informed choices in relation to a product, and which cause or are likely to cause the average consumer to take a different transactional decision. These are known as aggressive practices”.
In the examples of what constitutes aggressive practices, the guidance includes,
“threatening the tenant with eviction to dissuade them from exercising rights they have under the tenancy agreement or in law, for example where they wish to make a complaint to a local authority about the condition of the property, or seek damages for disrepair”.
Likewise, evicting a tenant as a punishment for a complaint is unfair practice, as the Competition and Markets Authority recognises. In either case, a Section 21 notice should not be enforced by the courts.
What is needed is not more law, but better information for tenants to understand their rights. Simply put, there is already ample protection for tenants, as I have tried to explain. In too many cases, they do not know that it exists.