My Lords, I declare my interests. I was an estate agent and am a consultant to an estate agency. I also piloted the 1988 Act through the House. The Act was introduced by my late noble friend Lord Ridley of Liddesdale when he was Nick Ridley and Secretary of State, and I am delighted that it has been so successful. It was controversial and was criticised quite heavily at the time, but it has achieved what it set out to do, which was to improve the private sector rented market and to give more people a choice of tenancies.
I have two concerns of principle with these amendments. One is the timing. This is Report stage, and this is a technical issue. I understand very well that the Liberal Party has put a great deal of emotion and faith into these amendments, and I do not blame them at all: technical points have been raised which need to be discussed. However, we can speak only once, and there is no way that this amendment is going to be discussed in any detail in another place. We are the only Chamber of Parliament that can actually get into this, but we are now limited to Report and Third Reading. The noble Lord, Lord Best, whose opinion we all respect, said that there could be some tweaks, but he did not tell us what the tweaks were. Those are the sorts of things that we ought to be looking at but which, under the procedure, we cannot. I mildly chastise my noble friends on the Liberal Benches for not introducing this in Committee. I understand why they did not: because there was a Private Member’s Bill in another place. But that did not stop them, and we could have had a much better discussion than we are having now. I would have hoped that my noble friend on the Front Bench might have taken this back into Committee, particularly for this purpose.
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My second general concern is about the whole issue of the housing market. As many other noble Lords have said, this is a very fine balance. Section 21 is one of the key pendulums in the whole of the housing market legislation and has to be in the centre to get the balance right between landlords and tenants. My noble friend Lord Cathcart was absolutely right: we are dealing with, in this instance, the rogue landlords—who we all dislike and who we all want to get out of owning
property—but we are also dealing with, possibly, the worst type of tenant, who wants to be obstructive and has the ability to be obstructive.
When you make laws for those sorts of people, it is very hard to get the balance absolutely right, because the effect percolates up through all the good people. What you do to the very bad affects the good. There is a perception that the Government are moving away from the fine balance that has been achieved and are moving more in the direction of the tenant than of the landlord. As a result, I have received inquiries as to whether this is going to be a trend and whether people should continue to own property to let. I do not think that these amendments will have that effect, but it is a perception, and perception in housing is important. It is hard to define and calculate, but it is there. One therefore needs to be extra careful in dealing with these amendments to make certain that this does not move the pendulum in a way that none of us wants.
I have a couple of questions for my noble friend. When one talks about the relevant notice to the landlord, one presumes that that notice will be received by registered post. Let us look at this 14 days, because I think that my noble friend Lord Howard has a point here. Let us say that it is sent by registered post on 20 December. The landlord in this instance could be just an individual without back-up—not necessarily the bad landlord that the noble Lord, Lord Best, mentioned, but an honest upright citizen who has gone away over the Christmas and new year period and does not get the registered document within the 14 days. However, the tenant can prove that it was sent, and this amendment would kick in. I ask my noble friend to have a look at this, because there is merit in the argument, although I agree that we do not want to make it too long. I was rather impressed that he answered the amendment before it was actually moved and spoken to, because in this instance it helps us. However, I hope that he will be able to look at that particular point again.
Another point which needs looking at is that sometimes landlords and tenants agree to suspend a notice because the tenant says that he is going to move. I know that this is not frequent, and I have never encountered it, but it has been reported to me. An unscrupulous tenant may say, “Do not bother to serve the notice, I am going to go anyway and you can do the repairs when there is vacant possession. I do not want all the hassle”. Then, when the landlord does not put the notice in and the tenant changes his mind and sits there—there could be tenants as difficult as that—that puts the landlord in a worse position than he is now. This is relevant to Amendment 46A.
I will also raise a point on Amendment 46D, which I think was the second point that my noble friend the Minister raised, about the length of notice for the Section 21 notices. You have to give two months’ notice and now you cannot serve a notice within the first four months. There is a problem for a six-month tenancy. It is purely a practical problem. If I had a property—which I do not—and I let it to my noble friend for six months, I could not serve the notice on him for the first four months. I would then have two months’ notice to give him but it is a six-month tenancy
so that is blocked off. So at the end of the fourth month, I have that next day to serve the notice in order to get him out in a six-month period and fulfil the tenancy. I would like the Minister to comment on that, whether I am right or wrong. It is just making life a bit more difficult. It is moving the pendulum.
Yes, I agree with the principle. None of us likes rogue landlords. We do not want some of the present landlords owning the properties that they have because they are making life difficult for others. But those of us who actually support the principle of the amendment do want it to work.