Renters’ Rights Bill

Baroness Grender Excerpts

Tuesday 1st July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

If I may add one note to what the noble Lord has just said, it is very common in commercial contracts to have CPI over a series of periods followed by a reset to market level, in part because CPI may take it up too high and it comes back down to market level. I think that needs to be part of this amendment.

[Baroness Grender (LD)]

My Lords, we support the amendments in this group concerning rent affordability, a matter that strikes at the heart of the lived reality of millions of tenants. We welcome the long-overdue commitment to abolishing Section 21 no-fault evictions but, as Shelter rightly said in a release only this week:

“For every day the government doesn’t pass this bill, another 70 households will be threatened with homelessness because no fault evictions are being kept on life support for no good reason”.


I hope that we will soon get some reassurances about when this key measure will begin, to overcome some of the rumours in the media of late about it being delayed.

We also welcome all the work to fix the issue of the supply of decent homes across all tenures, but private rent inflation is persistently outpacing both wage growth and general inflation. According to the latest data—we heard some of it from the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, earlier—average rents in England rose by 7.1% in the 12 months to May 2025. Meanwhile, wages continue to grow more slowly than rents, with the most recent data showing annual growth of 5.2%. Rents have outstripped wages every month for nearly two years; that is, since September 2023. Over the past three years, the average annual rent has increased by £2,650, rising from £12,800 to £15,450, a 21% increase, compared with—for all the owner-occupiers here—just a 4% growth in house prices over the same period. This relentless rise is not just a statistical anomaly. It is a driver of poverty, hardship and, in some—way too many—cases, homelessness.

Amendment 25, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Best, and supported by me and the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, proposes a mechanism to smooth in-tenancy rent increases by limiting them to the lower of wage growth or inflation. The Bill currently restricts rent increases to once per year and allows tenants to challenge above-market rents at the First-tier Tribunal, as we heard in the previous group. However, “market rent” is often calculated based on arbitrary information, such as advertised rents for new tenancies, figures that will inevitably and typically be inflated and do not reflect the actual rents paid by sitting tenants. This methodology leaves tenants exposed to rent hike evictions—Section 21 in all but name—undermining the very security that the Bill purports to deliver.

Tenants on lower incomes will be particularly exposed. For the many renters who have no alternative but to rent, the cheapest places they can find at market rent are already, by definition, unaffordable. The tribunal process will help, but not fix, this problem, and certainly not soon. Generation Rent’s analysis found that while 73% of tenants who challenge a rent increase through the tribunal succeed in reducing the proposed rent, the average increase awarded is still 14%, and only a small minority of cases result in annualised increases below wage or rent inflation. The process is also onerous and complex, deterring many tenants from pursuing it at all.

Smoothing in-tenancy rent increases is therefore not just a technical fix but a vital safeguard during this period of transition. It will provide tenants with the predictability and stability needed to budget and to remain in their homes, free from the constant threat of unaffordable rent hikes. For landlords, it offers an indexed yield without the administrative burden and uncertainty of tribunal proceedings.

I ask in particular that the Opposition Front Bench and the Government Front Bench resist the temptation and lure to comment on these proposals as rent controls. That would suggest that the years of knowledge and experience of the noble Lords, Lord Young and Lord Best, have rendered them somehow incapable of being able to understand the difference between rent control and something else. This proposal is fundamentally different. It is time limited. It applies only to in-tenancy increases. It does not set market-wide caps. It is designed to stabilise rents for existing tenants, not to distort the market or stifle investment.

Beyond these immediate protections, we must look to the medium term while we wait for the much-needed and long-awaited additional supply of homes. That is why I have tabled Amendment 114, requiring the Secretary of State to conduct a comprehensive review of rent affordability with the express aim of establishing a national rental affordability commission. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for her support and the Renters’ Reform Coalition for their work on this issue. The coalition has found that nearly one-third of private renters—an estimated 3.8 million people—always or often struggle to afford essentials such as groceries due to the amount that they spend on rent, and nearly one in 10 have sold or pawned personal items to be able to afford to rent.