Renters’ Rights Bill
Lord Hacking Excerpts(4 days, 2 hours ago)
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Baroness Wolf of Dulwich (CB)
My Lords, Amendment 87 in my name proposes that the Government adopt a screening procedure for rent appeals. It draws on and is prompted by current Scottish practice. The approach works well there and could make a substantial contribution to addressing the growing pressure on court capacity, which we have been discussing.
My amendment does not, in any way, reduce the right of tenants to appeal against a rent increase. I am not sure that it even reduces the incentive to appeal on the off chance, but it certainly reduces the likelihood that the courts will be overwhelmed by appeals and, in particular, appeals that do not succeed and therefore swamp the courts, to the detriment of important and merit-worthy cases.
Under the Government’s current proposals, tenants will enjoy a number of new and important rights: rents cannot be increased as often as at present, for example, and the notice period is increased. Most importantly in the context of this group of amendments, all tenants who wish to challenge what they see as an excessive rent increase have access to an independent tribunal. The tribunal cannot propose an increase that is any higher than the one initially proposed by the landlord; it can endorse the landlord’s proposal, in effect, or rule that a lower rent should be charged. Obviously, these changes will be of great assistance to tenants whose landlords are proposing major increases that are out of line with inflation or the market.
The problem is that, from most tenants’ point of view, appealing against an increase becomes something of a no-brainer. Why on earth would you not? What would you lose? At worst, you get a delay in the date when the increase takes effect. In that situation, the courts are bound to be faced with a tsunami of appeals with which they cannot possibly cope.
As many noble Lords are aware, Scotland reformed its rental legislation quite recently and it therefore provides us with useful indications of how contemporary rental markets respond to various types of change. Some Scottish developments are not very encouraging, as we have heard: there seems to be an ongoing decline in the number of rental properties and a sharp fall in the construction of properties for rent. However, one aspect of the current Scottish regime seems extremely sensible and successful. It does not reduce Scottish tenants’ rights but it does protect their court system.
The first stage in an appeal against a proposed rent increase goes to Rent Service Scotland. Apparently, it takes Rent Service Scotland, on average, just five days to respond. In almost every case, things stop there; very few cases then go on to a tribunal hearing.
The National Residential Landlords Association obtained information under a freedom of information request, which showed that, in the four months from April to July 2024, 928 applications were made to Rent Service Scotland to appeal a proposed rent increase. While there do not seem to be any summary statistics available that show exactly how numbers have evolved and changed over time, the Scottish tribunal is certainly not dealing with anything approaching that number. In fact, only about 30 decisions relating to rent increases were published between August 2024 and March 2025. The full 2023-24 Scottish tribunals report also shows that, while private rental sector cases were the large majority of property cases, they were overwhelmingly to do with evictions, deposits and repairs and not rent appeals.
Obviously, the Scottish situation is very different from ours, notably in adopting rent caps, but it is also obvious that that system is effective in giving tenants and landlords very quick feedback rather than months in limbo. It is also obvious, given the volume of appeals, that without this system the Scottish tribunal would be spending a lot of time and resource on a very large number of cases that were, in effect, a waste of its time.
It would be very easy for us to introduce a similar first-stage process in England. There is a large amount of expertise on rents outside the tribunals and courts. The Valuation Office Agency already gives the Government the valuations and property advice they need to support taxation and benefits. Rent officers set rents for the remaining group of protected tenancies. So, all the basic infrastructure we need is in place.
My amendment therefore proposes that all appeals against rent increases should go in the first instance to the Valuation Office Agency and progress to the First-tier Tribunal only if there is a clear case to answer. Obviously, if the Government chose to embrace the general idea, as I very much hope they will, the details would be in their hands—this is a probing amendment.
To see how important such a screening process could be in protecting our court system from near-complete collapse, it is worth doing a little bit of back-of-the-envelope arithmetic. If appeal rates from private sector tenants in England were at the same level as we currently see in Scotland and they all proceeded to the tribunal, we would end up in England with over 40,000 cases a year. That compares with 909 rent increase cases heard in the year 2023-24. We would be looking at an increase that is more than fortyfold, or 4,000%. As we have heard from noble Lords, it can already take months for the First-tier Tribunal to rule, so how can it possibly respond to this sort of increase? Of course, under the Bill’s provisions, the longer the delays, the greater the incentive is to appeal, so I am afraid that fortyfold might just be the start.
It is no wonder that even very strong supporters of the Bill, such as the Local Government Association, are expressing concerns about the potential impact of the new appeal rights on the capacity of the First-tier Tribunal to make decisions in a timely fashion. This timeliness matters not just because of the direct impact on changes in rents but because our judicial system also needs to deal with other property issues, including anti-social behaviour. It is worth emphasising that anti-social behaviour is not just an issue for landlords; it is at least as much of an issue for surrounding residents, many of whom will be tenants. If you live next to a property which is being used for intensive drug dealing, it is not much consolation to be told that this occurs only with a tiny minority of properties.
We already have very long delays in the court system, as other Lords have pointed out. Those delays seem to be growing and not reducing and we as a Chamber must, for the sake of tenants just as much as landlords, take the potential impact on the courts into account in scrutinising the Bill.
I therefore urge the Government to consider following and learning from the Scottish example and introducing a first-stage screening of rent appeals outside the court system. Is the Minister willing to meet me to discuss that suggestion?
Lord Hacking (Lab)
My Lords, my Amendments 88, 91, 94, 97, 100 and 101 appear in this group. Before I speak to the individual amendments, my general observation is that I do not have great enthusiasm about several of them, but they have been put to me and I thought it necessary to have them aired in this Committee.
Amendment 88 would enable landlords to claim costs against the tenant when the landlord succeeded after the tribunal confirmed the rent increase. This follows the normal rule in front of all tribunals and courts in our land of costs following the event, the event being who won the dispute, and the costs therefore have to be picked up by the loser. Having said that, I have a reservation about this amendment, because it could be a deterrent against tenants challenging an increase in rent, which is undesirable.
In speaking to Amendment 91, I will speak also to Amendments 94, 97 and 100. All these amendments seek to establish that the increase in rent should be calculated from the expiry of the landlord’s notice for the increase rather than the date of the tribunal’s decision. I tabled this amendment because there is quite a noticeable delay in decisions of tribunals, which means the landlord does not get his increase in rent until several months later.
Amendment 101 moves to a different subject: that the rent payable on the decision of the tribunal should be paid in equal monthly instalments within six months of the tribunal’s determination—that speaks for itself.
I am just looking at my list of amendments to speak to and I think I have got there; I have completed my comments on all of them. I say again that I do not speak to them with great enthusiasm. I spoke with great enthusiasm on Thursday in supporting Amendment 60 from the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere, and my own Amendments 165 and 166. Unfortunately, my enthusiasm for these amendments has not so far permeated to my noble friend on the Front Bench, but I hope that they will do later.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I rise with huge enthusiasm for my amendments. Amendment 90 in this group relates to Amendment 89 in the following group, so I will speak just once. I have been told to call them probing amendments; really, I would like to push them to a vote. In fact, I would like the Minister to accept them because I think they are very good. They are similar to probing amendments put down by my colleague Carla Denyer in the other place and aim to ensure that tenants have a way of benefiting from energy efficiency improvements where the Government have given landlords the money to make them.
I would like the Minister to think about who profits from the government subsidy. Are the Government interested only in increasing the profits of landlords or should tenants benefit as well? Triple-glazed windows and wall insulation mean lower energy bills for the tenant, but that makes absolutely no difference to them if the saving is cancelled out by higher rents.
Take, for example, this case study provided by Generation Rent: Maya lives with her husband and children in a home they rent from a private landlord. They had a lot of energy efficiency work done, which was paid for by a government grant. They were eligible for it because they received benefits. However, Maya came to Citizens Advice for help when the landlord asked for a £500 rent increase after her family had been through all the disruption of getting their home upgraded. You can imagine the dust, the dirt, the noise and the general disruption of having workers around all the time.
This increase would have left Maya’s family facing a £900 shortfall between their local housing allowance and their rent, making it absolutely unaffordable for them to stay in their home. Maya tried to negotiate the rent with the landlord but has now been issued with a Section 21 eviction notice. Maya and her husband believe that now the property is in an improved condition, thanks to the grant funding they secured, the landlord wants to find more affluent tenants who will pay a higher rent.
Lord Hacking
“(d) a lease clause prescribing a rent increase in line with the Retail Price Index or the Consumer Price Index two months prior to the date of the rent increase coming into effect, subject to a minimum of 3% and a maximum of 8%;”
Lord Hacking (Lab)
My Lords, we are moving to a new subject in the taking of the Bill through Committee. This amendment concerns the process of assessment. I am sorry that so many noble Lords are leaving at this juncture, but I will go on, on the basis that I have been asked to move the amendment. It is directed towards the assessment of rent increases under the open market rent test. What I am seeking to do in this amendment is to limit these rent increases to the retail prices index and the consumer prices index. That merely provides, I suggest, a brake on the assessment of rent, which I hope the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, will like—she is nodding, which is very nice to notice—because she was concerned about moving into the open market rent and the unfair impact that could have on tenants’ rents.
Lord Hacking (Lab)
My Lords, I am about to beg leave to withdraw my amendment, but I would like to reply to my noble friend the Minister and thank her very much for her detailed reply. I did not know about the experience in Ottawa, and I would like to consider that further.
I say quite plainly that I was not seeking to set up a rent control; I was seeking to set up guidance on rent increases associated with the RPI or another financial index. The reason for that was expressed well by the noble Lord, Lord Best, who detailed the problems for the renter in having to go through the process of making an appeal to the First-tier Tribunal and all the difficulties in that. If that can be relieved, we would be doing renters a service. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Jamieson (Con)
My Lords, I will speak to the group of amendments in the name of my noble friend Lady Scott, relating to payments of rent in advance. The payment of rent in advance can provide a number of significant benefits to tenants. These go beyond avoiding late fees and the demonstration of financial security. Tenants may wish to pay rent in advance for financial planning or even to avoid the worry of monthly payments. Amendments 108, 109, 110, 112, 113 and 114 recognise and affirm the legitimate choice of a tenant to pay rent in advance. I emphasise that this is rooted firmly in mutual agreement. If a tenant does not wish to pay in advance, they are under no obligation to do so, but if a tenant chooses to take this step, if they believe it is in their personal best interest, why should we stand in their way? If a tenant makes a judgment on the basis of their financial circumstances that this is in their best interest, why should it be for the Minister to say, “No, the Government know best”? If a tenant believes their ability to pay may be inhibited by a financial burden coming down the track, they could legitimately plan for the payment now. But, regardless of the reason or even the need, if there is mutual agreement, what is the problem?
I turn to the impact of this on two groups who will be particularly impacted by this change: overseas students and those with poor credit ratings. Tenants with a poor credit rating history will inevitably appear risky—this may be through no fault of their own; they may just not have a rating history—and often this risk is too insurmountable to ignore. By paying up front, tenants can demonstrate responsibility and ultimately improve their chances of securing a rental agreement and the security of a home. In many cases, this proactive step, choosing to pay in advance, is the only practical means by which tenants can build trust, enhance their credibility and demonstrate financial reliability. Will the Minister please set out the impact of this change on those with a less than optimal credit history?
Next, I wish to address the issue of overseas students with no local credit history. The Committee will know that the UK credit rating agencies do not hold information about a person’s financial affairs outside the country, or any foreign credit reports. Therefore, overseas students often require a UK-based guarantor to cover potential property damage or unpaid bills. Where this is not possible, payment in advance can be a solution, and payments are often made for the entire term, or even the entire academic year. Will the Minister set out the expected impact of this change on overseas students, and the number we anticipate losing due to difficulties in securing student accommodation? Alternatively, does she believe that landlords will still have a sufficient incentive to house overseas students, despite their limited credit history? Will she outline what steps the Government are taking to strengthen the enforcement around credit arrears where overseas students are unable to pay? Current mechanisms are often weak, but it is an issue that is far less prevalent when payment is made up front.
I also want to highlight the plight of some of the most vulnerable, where councils have a duty of homelessness prevention. Councils often work with landlords and tenants, offering advanced rental payments, larger deposits and guarantees, which would be hampered by these proposals. Are councils to be banned from paying rent in advance to support some of the most vulnerable in our society? As has been raised earlier, the Home Office plans to offer landlords five-year tenancies to house asylum seekers. Will this involve rent being paid more than one month in advance? I invite the Minister to explain and I appreciate that she has offered to write to noble Lords regarding this. I look forward to that, and to any additional information that she is able to provide.
Finally, I draw the Committee’s attention to Amendment 117 in the name of my noble friend Lady Scott. This amendment requires Ministers to ensure that changes being made to the Tenant Fees Act 2019 are clearly communicated to tenants, letting agents and landlords. These changes involve fines of up to £5,000 for new offences and it is essential that landlords and letting agencies are aware of their new responsibilities. We regard this as a technical but important amendment and I hope that the Minister will see it as a practical and necessary change that can be accepted. This group will consider whether mutually agreed or tenant-requested payment of rent in advance should be permitted to continue. On these Benches, we are clear that it should. Mutual agreement can foster a more stable housing situation, one that recognises the unique benefits that rent in advance may offer certain groups of tenants in securing a home. I hope that the Minister will take note.
Lord Hacking (Lab)
My Lords, I entirely support the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, in his submissions just now. My Amendments 115 and 116 deal with the same problem but from a different perspective.
Lord Hacking (Lab)
My noble friend has replied to my Amendments 115 and 116, but I would be grateful if she could agree to talk further on them, particularly Amendment 116. It is an extraordinary situation how a landlord is not permitted to prevent a tenant moving into a property even though the tenant has not done the basic thing of paying the rent in advance. It is not an excessive amount of rent; in my case, as I explained to my noble friend, it is the rent for the rest of the month—a modest payment. Why on earth can a landlord not say, “You can’t come into the property until you’ve paid your rent”? You always pay rent in advance.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I would just reiterate the comments I made to my noble friend that, having undertaken a tenancy, gone through the process of vetting and paid the deposit and the holding deposit, it will be a very rare case where the tenant proceeds not to pay their first month’s rent.
Renters’ Rights Bill
Lord Hacking Excerpts(1 week, 1 day ago)
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Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)
My Lords, I declare my interest as a landlord of a residential property. I will speak to Amendments 60 and 61 in this group. I am grateful to the National Residential Landlords Association for very helpful discussions. These amendments would benefit both tenants and landlords.
The first amendment would keep the threshold for mandatory repossession by landlords at two months of rent arrears, rather than increasing it to three months, as proposed in the Bill. The second would continue to permit rent arrears arising from non-payment of universal credit to be taken into account as a ground for repossession.
One might think that my motivation behind these amendments is purely to support landlords but, as I said at Second Reading, I am keen to support tenants as much as landlords in improving the current system, since they are two sides of the same coin, and one cannot exist without the other. This is a golden thread running through this entire Bill.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, said on the first day of Committee, there must be “balance” in the Bill. Any weighting of the scales in favour of one—while it might be well motivated—risks being counterproductive and detrimental to both. This is amply demonstrated by the Bill proposing to increase the threshold for rent arrears to three months before enforcement action can be taken.
Tenants in arrears will struggle to recover financially, making it harder for them to access housing in the future. The arrears are likely to mount up well beyond the three-month threshold. For example, if one adds on the one-month notice period, plus the average seven months for a court to process a Section 8 possession application, the tenant could end up having to leave the property with nearly 12 months’ arrears. Is that really a good outcome for tenants?
In addition, responsible landlords will become more risk averse, prioritising tenants who can clearly prove their ability to sustain a tenancy in the long term. This will be particularly damaging for vulnerable tenants, including those in receipt of local housing allowance, especially as support for housing costs has been frozen from April this year. Moreover, allowing rent arrears to climb to three months before enforcement action can be taken risks intimidating good landlords into leaving the sector.
A landlord is not a charity, and some depend entirely on the rent to pay mortgages or for their daily living costs. If good landlords are intimidated into selling up because it is too difficult to enforce rent arrears, tenants will very often have nowhere to live. According to Savills, up to 1 million more homes for private rent will be needed by 2031 to meet growing demand. We must keep good landlords in the sector to avoid making tenants homeless. Again, these are two sides of the same coin, and one cannot exist without the other.
My first amendment would keep the threshold for enforcement action at two months’ rent arrears. I accept that, if we are going to keep the existing threshold, landlords should be required to do more to help their tenants. For example, there could be a duty on landlords, at the first sign of arrears, to seek meaningful engagement with the tenant to prevent further debt, and to show in any subsequent possession proceedings that they had done that, or at least tried to do that. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the National Residential Landlords Association produced some very highly regarded golden rules showing how this and other types of landlord-tenant engagement could work; for example, by the landlord pointing the tenant to a relevant advisory service, such as Citizens Advice and/or the debt charity StepChange. Such measures would improve the status quo while avoiding the damaging effects of moving to a three-month arrears threshold.
I turn to my second amendment. It makes no sense whatever to disregard for enforcement purposes rent arrears arising from the fact that the tenant has not received an award of universal credit under Part 1 of the Welfare Reform Act 2012. This is for two reasons. First, it is unjustifiable to penalise landlords for non-payment of universal credit to the tenant. Why should the landlord suffer if the non-payment of universal credit is the fault of the tenant, or if the universal credit system has broken down in some way?
Secondly, unlike in the social sector, private landlords are not allowed to know, under GDPR rules, whether a tenant is in receipt of universal credit. As such, they have no idea whether rent arrears are due to a non-payment of universal credit, especially if a tenant has multiple sources of income. Disregarding non-payment of universal credit is therefore wholly unworkable since, if the landlord does not know whether rent arrears are due to non-payment of universal credit, the Bill has the effect that they may try to take enforcement action that proves to be pointless, which is surely the last thing that this new system needs.
The upshot is that landlords will be more cautious about taking on tenants on universal credit, contrary to the commendable ethos of the Bill as a whole. I ask the Minister to consider these amendments very carefully and to bear in mind the need for balance and my suggested mitigations so as to keep the status quo, having regard to the need for real evenness of handling on both sides of the landlord/tenant coin.
Lord Hacking (Lab)
My Lords, I rise to support Amendment 60 of the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere, and will speak to my Amendments 165 and 166. But, before I do, I have two apologies to give to the House. The first apology relates to my failure to speak at Second Reading, although I did speak at the Second Reading of the last Government’s Renters (Reform) Bill. The reason I was unable to speak at Second Reading is that I was, unfortunately, in and out of St Thomas’ Hospital, which looked after me very well, but I was unable to come to the House at the time of the Second Reading of the Bill.
My second apology is for my absence on Tuesday of this week, the first day of Committee on the Bill. My wife had booked a short Easter holiday on the Isle of Wight, not expecting the House to be sitting immediately after Easter Monday. Rightly or wrongly, I took the favour of the family rather than the first day of Committee. I think my noble friend the Minister has forgiven me for this—at least I hope she has. Happily, however, my noble friend Lady Warwick of Undercliffe, who sits behind me, agreed to be in the House for the first Committee day and to move any of my amendments should they be called. Even more happily, none was.
I should declare interests which are recorded in the register. My wife and I are the landlords of five sets of tenants in one-bedroom flats in the house next door to our own. While we as landlords and our tenants will be subject to the new provisions contained in this Bill, there is nothing contentious relating to our five tenants—or to ourselves—that I will be raising during the passage of this Bill.
Amendment 60, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere, which I support, has been grouped among a variety of amendments relating to orders for possession. Most of them have little contact one with the other, but they are all grouped together in this same list. That certainly applies to my Amendments 165 and 166.
I shall say a general word before I go on to the specific argument concerning these amendments. This Bill is, most rightly, directed to redress the balance between the landlord and the tenant in the private rented sector. This is very right, because since the Housing Act 1988, the balance has swung far too far towards the landlords—particularly rogue landlords—which has caused great distress to many innocent tenants. However, we must be sure now that we are getting the right balance between landlords and tenants. Yes, there are rogue landlords, but there are also rogue tenants.
Originally, in Schedule 1 to the Housing Act 1988, notices for possession for arrears of rent would not become effective until the rent was overdue for 13 weeks, relating to weekly or fortnightly rentals, or three months, relating to monthly rentals. This was altered in some subsequent legislation, and this Bill now seeks to go back to the provisions of the 1988 Act. What is the reason for this? I would be grateful if my noble friend the Minister could address it. What is the evidence that shorter periods of eight weeks and two months had been causing any problems?
We need to look at the practical side. The maximum deposit that a landlord is now permitted to collect is calculated against five weeks of rent. The effect is that the landlord is covered for the first failure of paying rent but is not covered during the subsequent two months of non-paid rent. More than that, it will take up to two more months before the landlord is able to get a hearing in the county court for possession and unpaid rent. This means that the landlord will be without rent for at least four months. Even if the landlord succeeds in getting an order for possession and an order for the unpaid rent, the chances are that he will never get back the unpaid rent. The question that I put to the House, and indeed to my noble friend the Minister, is whether this is fair and balanced.
I turn to Amendments 165 and 166, which are directed to the time in which the landlord is not permitted to put the property on the market when he has gained possession on the grounds of family need or other need specified in ground 1 or 1A of the Housing Act 1988. I adopt all that the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, said in his argument that this period under which the landlord is not permitted to put the property on the market—a period of 12 months—is quite excessive and quite wrong. I need not repeat the noble Lord’s arguments.
The Minister was very kind to see many of us in meetings before Committee. I had the privilege of a meeting with her, at which she explained that there is an abuse by some rogue landlords in using the instrument to remove a tenant from the property, let us say, for members of his family or other persons as specified in ground 1A of the 1988 Act. She described the 12 months as a deterrent against this abuse—a means, so my noble friend said, for the rogue landlord to raise the rent. What about the genuine situation of a landlord getting possession of the accommodation, say on family grounds, to accommodate grandparents, and then one of the grandparents has a severe stroke which prevents both of them taking up the accommodation? Why should the landlord then be left with the property when he was genuinely seeking to accommodate members of his own family for 12 months? The question is: is it fair or right that the landlord is prevented for a whole year from letting out his property? That is a matter that I again address to my noble friend the Minister.
Lord Hacking (Lab)
Happily, my noble friend has already sat down, so I need not use that phraseology. She will remember that all my amendments discussed today related to the 12-month provision. Will she agree to my also coming to any further discussions she has on the 12-month issue?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
All noble Lords, including my noble friends, will of course be welcome to any meetings that are held.
King’s Speech
Lord Hacking Excerpts(9 months, 1 week ago)
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Lord Hacking (Lab)
My Lords, I much welcome our new Attorney-General, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hermer. He walks in the steps not only of Lord Williams of Mostyn, whom we all remember with great affection, but of my noble and learned friend Lord Goldsmith, who was Attorney-General from 2001 to 2007 and of my noble and learned friend Lady Scotland, who was Attorney-General from 2007 to 2010. It is most welcome to have the Attorney-General back in our House.
From these Benches, I pledge support for our new Government. I do not agree with all the proposals in the manifesto but I am confident that my Government will listen with willing ears to my concerns and, better still, may abide by them.
This brings me to my confession. For that purpose, I have to take your Lordships to last Wednesday afternoon for the first round of speeches following the gracious Speech. Your Lordships who were present would have heard the most excellent speeches from my noble friends Lord Reid and Lady Hazarika. Your Lordships would also have heard in the middle of the speech of our new Lord Privy Seal a loud, “Hear, hear!” This was also clearly recorded at col. 23 of Hansard, which reads: “A noble Lord: Hear, hear!” That was me.
Lord Hacking (Lab)
Thank you for a further, “Hear, hear!”
I made this noisy intervention because our new Lord Privy Seal had said:
“Ministers in our Government will not accept all changes but, when the House expresses a constructive view, the Government should treat that with respect”.—[Official Report, 17/7/24; col. 23.]
This will not always be easy. Under the last Government, the power of government—the power of the Executive against the legislature—became most powerful. Your Lordships will perhaps remember Report on the Illegal Migration Bill, when we passed no fewer than nine constructive amendments and they were all chucked out without even consideration by the Government of the day.
It is not only in this House that we suffered. I read from a report by my friend Jess Phillips in the New Statesman:
“Round and round and round we walked, voting on the House of Lords’ amendments to the Illegal Migration Bill. The first session took three and a half hours, the second two hours. It really is something to spend so much time losing votes … It feels to me like the very definition of madness that this is how our democracy works: hours wasted on a foregone conclusion that in the end will amount to no change … during these past few weeks … parliament”,
has felt to be a “farce”. On any view, that is most concerning.
It is interesting that the Leader of the Opposition, when he spoke in that debate—he spoke, as always, very well indeed—referred to the 409 government defeats in the last Parliament. I think his point was that there were too many Divisions, but it can also be said that on each of these 409 occasions the Government of the day were not listening to your Lordships’ House.
I finish by mentioning my own departure. I have always been under threat of expulsion from the moment I arrived in this House over 50 years ago. The first Wilson Government had proposed serious reforms of the House of Lords, which were defeated by an unholy alliance between Enoch Powell on the right and Michael Foot on the left. I have been under your sufferance for all these years, but it has been a great honour and an enriching experience to be here. Thank you. I am ready to be expelled for the second time.
Renters (Reform) Bill
Lord Hacking ExcerptsWednesday 15th May 2024
(11 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Lord Hacking (Lab)
My Lords, I should begin with a short disclosure that my wife and I have in the next-door house under our ownership five one-bedroom flats, which are occupied by tenants whom we do our very best to look after well.
I do not often speak in your Lordships’ House, but in recent times I have found myself always at the bottom of the speakers’ list. I had higher hopes for this debate— I see that the noble Lord, Cromwell, takes bottom place and I am one away from that—because I was next to the noble Lord, Lord Frost, in the earlier draft of the list of speakers. He has kept his place and I have tumbled down to the bottom.
However, speaking late in a debate does give one the opportunity to refer to earlier speakers, and I do so most willingly. I thank the Minister for her excellent introduction, with which I found myself largely in agreement. I also take the opportunity to thank my noble friend Lady Taylor of Stevenage for her opening speech on behalf of my party. I particularly agreed with her comments on the impact of the changes in the many amendments that were moved in the House of Commons, and also with her comment that the Government have ended up just “kicking the can down the road”. I also agreed with her reference to the need for fundamental reform.
I am not going to go through all the speakers. I could do, because there were excellent speeches to comment on, but I will just refer to the noble Lord, Lord Best. His description of the switch of social housing to PRS was quite excellent. I am sure we are all grateful to him for his brilliant analysis of the current status of the landlord/tenant market.
I turn to the complexity problem. This is not the first Bill that inflicts much complexity on us and then on the users of our Bills. If only our parliamentary draftsmen could remind themselves of the Occupiers’ Liability Act 1957, which sets out in the simplest and clearest terms the liabilities of all occupiers of land.
What about this Bill? Its size is colossal. It is 194 pages long, containing 140 clauses and six complex schedules. In mastering this torrent of proposed legislation, we have had the benefit of excellent briefings from the Law Society, Justice and, most of all, our Library staff in their excellent briefing paper. Therefore, should we not remind ourselves, as we can remind ourselves in other Bills, that this Bill is directed to the fundamental right of all our citizens in the private rented sector to have the security of a decent home and to pay a fair rent, while likewise enabling landlords to provide just that?
I will return later to the great importance of such ordinary citizens having proper access and an understanding of the provisions of the Bill, but for now I will speak about when I first became aware of the relationship between landlord and tenant in the private rented sector. I was a young barrister in the 1960s when we were operating under the old rent Acts, where there was security of tenure and protection from unaffordable rent increases. It was in the terms of those Acts that no eviction could be made without cause.
There was one interesting provision in the old rent Acts that enabled a landlord to move a tenant from one property to another on the grounds of offering suitable alternative accommodation. That has not reappeared in this Bill. I criticise that not, but it is a rather nice memory.
I remind the House that under the old Acts the rents were controlled by the rent tribunals. What went wrong was that the rent was too low for landlords to invest in their properties, and many were in shocking condition. That was brought home to me in the 1980s, when my wife and I moved into a square in London then dominated by rent-protected properties, and we learned some appalling things. I will refer to two of them. There were two spinster ladies, I think well into their 80s, next door to us. They had no hot water in their rented property, nor indeed any heat provided except perhaps from the electric fire. They had a bath but no hot water to go into it. So they bought a washing machine and put it through all its motions without putting in any detergent, and when the hot water exited from the washing machine they had some water in the bath in which they could bathe themselves. We also learned in the square of a top-floor tenant who had no supply of electricity, and his only form of getting light into his flat was using a gas supply.
We should therefore be aware of what happened in this Bill’s long journey through the House of Commons. This was referred to by my noble friend Lady Taylor of Stevenage, but let us look at it in a little more detail. In Committee the Government tabled 183 amendments, including 52 new clauses and one new schedule. Well, bravo—but has the balance, as my noble friend suggested, been disturbed? My party tabled 81 amendments in the other place but they were all rejected. Those amendments were non-political, dealing with such things as proposed rent levels, notice-to-quit periods and financial penalties for landlords in breach. There are other examples that I could give.
On Report the Government excelled themselves even more. They moved 225 amendments, 24 new clauses and one further new schedule. Bravo again, but was the Bill improved? My noble friend Lady Taylor suggests the very opposite. Once again, all my party’s amendments were rejected. I have to say that the treatment of the legislature during the passage of the Bill through the House of Commons was most shoddy. As is the custom in this House, the Government can expect constructive amendments from all quarters. May all our amendments be properly treated.
The creation of the obligatory requirement for landlords to enter into the ombudsman scheme, the setting up of a digital property portal and the application of the decent homes standard are all most welcome, but they will all be defeated unless the court system can promptly deal with eviction or possession cases. Also, unless housing legal aid is massively increased to the levels that I remember in the 1960s, tenants will be forced to appear in the county courts as litigants in person to deal with the complexities of the provisions of this Bill. This is a burden on the judiciary and a cause of delay in the courts transacting this business. I look towards the Minister: may the Government in this House listen to us on the Back Benches and be willing to consider our amendments and judge them on their merit.
Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill
Lord Hacking ExcerptsWednesday 1st May 2024
(1 year ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 View all Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 50-IV Fourth marshalled list for Committee - (30 Apr 2024)
Lord Thurlow (CB)
My Lords, I have not heard a voice in the Chamber this afternoon against the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Best. It is such a refreshing amendment, it is long awaited, and we have heard, and we all knew, that his report was kicked into the long grass many years ago by the Government, and that is something of a disgrace. Even in the Levelling- up and Regeneration Bill debates last year, this subject was much discussed. We must not overlook that large cohort of hugely responsible and professional property managers—and there are many—but our focus must be on those who fail to adopt high standards, those who knowingly overcharge, those who take discreet commissions, and those in the pockets of clients with dubious standards.
This subject of rogue managing agents has come up again and again in this Bill; the time has come to act. The amendment clearly has strong cross-party support, and we have heard that the Government want to do it in principle. If the Government really want to do something for leasehold occupiers, this is it: simple regulation of property managing agents and other related property advisers; no one to practise without registration; a no-nonsense, strictly monitored and enforced system of effective supervision; and a simple, advertised complaints procedure for the lessees and rigorous monitoring of those complaints. This amendment has my wholehearted support. I hope the Government will adopt it; if not, I hope it is pressed on Report.
Lord Hacking (Lab)
My Lords, I do not want to jump in front of my Front Bench, but this is not a Bill that I have followed in detail. I did not take part in the Second Reading, and I have not taken part so far in Committee, but I was in the House this afternoon, and that is why I am standing up to very briefly address your Lordships on Amendment 94, which should be fully supported. I declare a personal interest, and your Lordships will see how I can link that to supporting this amendment. My wife and I are both freeholders and leaseholders of five flats, which are in an adjacent house to our own house. We personally manage them and know all the tenants well, and we try to deal with all their needs and circumstances, but the time will come when we have to sell. It is that stage that I am worried about, to ensure that these leaseholds are properly managed under the auspices of the regulator.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to take part in this debate and to hear from such eminent experience across the Committee on this issue. On one of the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, about how far back this goes: one of my very first jobs in the early 1970s was at an estate agent. It was a family business run by somebody who had trained as a journalist and had a career in journalism, but he did, at least in that case, have the grace to train as a chartered surveyor as he carried on his business as an estate agent. You would have thought that things would have changed a bit over the subsequent years—it is quite a long time ago now—and it is ridiculous that it can still happen that people with little experience or qualification can be in charge of huge sums of other people’s money and property, and I hope that we can move matters on, at least in that respect.