Renters’ Rights Bill

Baroness Freeman of Steventon Excerpts

Wednesday 14th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kennedy of Cradley (Lab)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 222 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, and all the amendments in this group, including Amendment 228 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, and the noble Lord, Lord Best, to which I have added my name. I declare my interest as a Nationwide Foundation trustee—I think I declared this last time I spoke, but I cannot remember, so better twice than never.

I am sure the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, will set out in great detail why the list of criteria is needed in the Bill. However, put simply, more detail on what the PRS database will contain needs to be in the Bill, which needs to set out core functions and minimum standards. Leaving the detail to be filled in later by regulation at the whim of a future Secretary of State is not acceptable. It will make the Bill less stable and requirements less easily understood. Landlords need clarity about what the law requires of them and tenants need clarity on what they can expect in terms of their rights.

I hope my noble friend Lady Taylor of Stevenage will bring back on Report an amendment that sets out minimum requirements for the PRS database that can sit in the Bill, to give clarity and direction akin to Amendment 222 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill.

[Baroness Freeman of Steventon (CB)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 222, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill. This Bill is very big and has wide-ranging impacts. Some are certainly planned, and others are possibly unplanned. It is vital that those impacts are evaluated. It is unfortunate that, at this stage, the evaluation plan is slightly unformed, but the impact assessment makes it clear that it is going to rely on some of the data collected in this database. Given that it is going to rely on that data, I think it has to be specified in the Bill.

For example, one of the prime aims of the Bill is to increase security of tenure, thereby reducing evictions and unplanned moves. The current source of that data is from the English Housing Survey, which suffers from the vagaries of any survey at the moment and questions about its validity. More importantly, it also does not have the necessary granularity, given that the local authority level is going to be the level at which this Bill is enforced. So we need the data that is going to be collected in this database in order to be able to tell whether the Bill is at all effective, and what other effects it might have.

That is true also of things such as rental increases, which it is trying to keep a lid on. If we do not have a record of those rental increases, we will not know whether it is effective. So I am concerned to hear tonight that the database may not even be fully in action within the first year of the Act being passed. How will we know what the effects are if the Act has already been in place for over a year before we measure some of these impacts? I would love to hear more from the Minister about what is going to be in the database and when those different aspects of the database are going to be active.

[The Earl of Lytton (CB)]

My Lords, I have already mentioned Amendment 222 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, so I need say no more about it at this stage. I turn, then, to the one other amendment in this group that interests me: the one introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Grender. The information that she proposes should be disclosed in the database is quite extensive. I have three points to make.

First, is the noble Baroness satisfied—and would the Minister consider herself satisfied—that, if there were an ongoing dispute, putting that data raw, on an incomplete process, would be free from creating a prejudice around the outcome? That might be in either direction; I am thinking only that this might be a quasi- judicial process of one sort or another. I just wish to flag that up.

Secondly, in any event, obviously, the database would identify both parties: the renter and the landlord. I assume that, when the noble Baroness says that her amendment would create a greater egalitarian thing, she is also happy with renters and landlords being mentioned, because the identity of the parties will be known. However, depending on the detail that goes in, there might be the disclosure of what might be described as more sensitive information related to the nature of the dispute; I wished to flag that up in case it had been overlooked. Bear in mind that, if we are talking about an open register, this goes to everybody, anywhere, who can tap into the information.

Thirdly, there is a whole issue here around the performance characteristics that sit behind this group of amendments, in terms of what is going on around the efficiency of the process through which information might be derived from this database. There must be a difference, I think, between the metadata from the processing of things, such as the speed at which things are dealt with and so on, the data on the types of disputes that might typically arise, including their frequency and distribution, and the individual data on the register. There will certainly be derivative information that does not necessarily require the total disclosure of all sorts of intricate and possibly personal details.

I would be very happy for the database to be used for the purpose of the further processing of non-personalised data of one sort or another for statistical and performance calculating processes. I am less clear, though, that that necessarily sits as a direct part of the database; that is, as a derivative of it. One must be careful about what one is expecting the raw data on a database to consist of; and about how it is going to be used as a derivative thereafter.