Renters’ Rights Bill

Earl of Kinnoull Excerpts

Tuesday 6th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)]

My Lords, Amendment 124 is in my name, and I declared relevant interests earlier. The amendment is very simple: it is about putting social housing tenants in the same place as those in the private rental sector after the Bill has become an Act.

I received a copy of a letter that the Dogs Trust sent to the Deputy Prime Minister in March this year in which it proposed exactly the same thing. Looking at the crib sheet for the answer that came back, I see that the first part is commendable in that it says: “The Government understands that pet ownership can be hugely beneficial, bringing joy to owners and supporting mental and physical health”. I can only agree with that. At Second Reading and in various parts of the process of this Bill, it has been eloquently and frequently said how important pets are and—speaking as a Scottish landlord, both personally and as a charitable trustee— I very much believe that and strongly support the concept of there being a rebuttable presumption that pets are allowed where people are renting properties.

The letter went on to make two points. The first point was that the Government did not feel that what amounted to Amendment 124 was correct, because social housing tenants was a separate policy area. Of course, it is all still MHCLG, and I do feel that someone standing at a bus stop in middle England would scratch their head about that particular one: why on earth should someone living in social housing be in a different place to someone living in the private rental sector? It is a distinction without a difference.

In the second part of the letter, it went on to give various reasons why it might be reasonable, within social housing, to say no to a tenant who wanted a pet. It all amounted to a series of reasons why it might not be reasonable for a pet to be allowed in a particular property, but of course that is already how the Bill is drafted: it is possible for a landlord to say that a particular pet or series of pets should not be allowed in rented accommodation, as long as that is reasonable. It is reasonable for a landlord to say no, so I do not quite see what the logical force of that is, because the social housing sector would retain that right to say no. I therefore urge the Minister to reach across the corridor at MHCLG and accept what has become a very popular amendment.

[Baroness Fookes (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest in that I have close connections with various animal charities, in particular as a vice-president of the RSPCA nationally and as president of one of its branches.

I too want to speak to Amendment 124, eloquently introduced by the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull. I see no logic whatever: to make a distinction in the way that apparently has been done is what I call Civil Service short-sightedness, and I strongly disapprove of it. I can see no logical reason whatever for treating people who are renting their properties differently simply because they live in a slightly different type of property. I hope that the Minister will look very carefully at this and come to a different conclusion.

I will broaden this out slightly to look at the various amendments in this group. It seems to me that while the heart is in the right place—and I give due credit to the Government for introducing this general right to have a pet, for which I have long campaigned—the Bill fails slightly in not laying down the circumstances clearly enough, so that it leaves the opportunity for some landlords to squeeze past what is clearly intended. On the other hand, it could make for some difficulties if the tenants themselves are unreasonable.

I suggest that the Minister look at bringing forward a code of conduct that would act as a guide for all the varying points which have been made hitherto—if you like, a “highway code”, not necessarily having the force of law, to which one could look for guidance where these tricky problems arise. I hope that this will commend itself to the Minister.

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We encourage all social landlords to adopt similar policies to ensure a fair and consistent approach. However, I acknowledge the significance of the points raised by the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull. I will reflect on these points and I would be happy to discuss the issue further with him. I said that pet ownership should not depend on the tenure of the property, and I mean that. I will give further consideration to the important issue that the noble Earl raises in his amendment. For the time being, on this basis, I hope that the noble Earl will not press his amendment.

[The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)]

I am most grateful to the Minister for giving way. I would like to give her a bit more ammunition. I am looking at a website to do with MHCLG that talks about the “one team” approach in which MHCLG is very sensibly engaged. The first key principle in this approach is joined-up delivery. I feel there is a strong case here for a one-team approach and joined-up delivery.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank the noble Earl for those further comments. As I said, I will be happy to have further discussions with him and to take this important point back.

Amendment 124A would introduce specific grounds for landlords to refuse consent for a tenant to keep a cat where the property is located within, or within one mile of, a protected site under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. The Government fully recognise the importance of protecting biodiversity and environmentally sensitive wildlife areas. However, we do not believe that such a blanket provision is necessary or proportionate in the context of this legislation. Nor is it fair on tenants, given that there is no similar restriction imposed on home owners in such environmentally sensitive areas.

The framework set out in Clause 12 already allows landlords to refuse consent where it is reasonable to do so. The amendment of the noble Earl, Lord Leicester, would in effect create an automatic exemption covering a significant number of properties near protected sites across England and Wales, regardless of the tenant’s circumstances or willingness to act responsibly and, as I said, would not affect any private owners in that area. It risks introducing an overly rigid restriction, undermining the Bill’s aim of promoting fair and balanced access to pet ownership in rented homes.

Tracking devices, which are sometimes put on cats’ collars, show how extensive cats’ daily travel can be— I think the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, referred to the extent of cats’ wanderings. It would be very difficult to keep a track on that for different places in different areas. It also places an unreasonable burden on landlords, requiring them to assess environmental designations and the distances between a property and a protected site—matters which are outside their typical responsibilities. For these reasons, I do not believe the amendment is necessary, and I hope the noble Earl will consider not pressing it.

While I understand the intention behind Amendment 125 from the noble Lord, Lord Black of Brentwood, I do not believe it would be practical for the Government to specify every scenario in which a landlord could or could not reasonably refuse a request to keep a pet. There are simply too many variables to account for, including the type of property, the nature of the pet and the specific circumstances of both the tenant and the landlord. This amendment seeks to outline certain, though not all, circumstances that may be deemed unreasonable when a landlord refuses a tenant’s request to keep a pet. However, its inclusion could inadvertently lead to any circumstance not explicitly included on this list being presumed reasonable by landlords. This could create unintended consequences, limiting flexibility and making it more difficult to fairly assess individual cases.

The question of whether it is reasonable for a tenant to have a pet in a rented property is, as I said before, best determined on a case-by-case basis. In most instances, this will be agreed on between the landlord and the tenant. As I said, there will be guidance available on this. Where disputes arise, they can be appropriately resolved by the ombudsman or the courts, which will be better placed to consider the individual facts of each case. It is also important to note that landlords will always retain the ability to refuse permission where a superior lease prohibits pets. This ensures that landlords are not placed in a position where they are forced to breach their own legal obligations.

Given these safeguards, I do not believe it is necessary to introduce additional legislative provisions that could add unnecessary rigidity to what should remain a flexible, case-by-case approach. In light of this, I hope the noble Lord will consider not pressing his amendment.

Amendment 126 from the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, seeks to define specific circumstances in which it would be considered unreasonable for a superior landlord to refuse consent for a tenant to keep a pet, such as personal opinions, general fears about the risk of damage caused by pets, or past unrelated experiences. While I understand the intention behind this amendment, I must resist it on the grounds that it could complicate the existing proposals unnecessarily. The Government’s position is that superior landlords should retain the ability to refuse consent without needing to justify their decision, particularly given the practical challenges involved in engaging with them.

In many cases, superior landlords are not based in the UK or are part of complex ownership structures and that can make communication slow, difficult and costly. Requiring them to provide reasons for refusal risks drawing immediate landlords and their tenants into prolonged and expensive legal or administrative processes. The Bill is designed to improve fairness and clarity in the tenant-landlord relationship without overburdening parties with obligations that may be difficult or unrealistic to meet in practice. That is why I said I will look into the quantum that might be involved here and come back to the noble Baroness on that, if that is okay. For these reasons, I do not believe the amendment is proportionate or necessary, and I hope the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, will consider not pressing it.

I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Leicester, for bringing forward Amendments 126A and 124A. Amendment 126A would place a duty on the Secretary of State to issue guidance on what constitutes a “reasonable refusal” of a pet under Clause 12, and would require consultation with landlords before they do so. I recognise the intention behind this proposal, which is to provide greater clarity and assurance for landlords when they consider tenant requests. As I have said, the concept of reasonable refusal is, by design, flexible. It allows landlords to take account of the specific circumstances of each tenancy. What is reasonable in one case may not be reasonable in another.

That said, I can assure the Committee that we will publish guidance to help landlords and tenants understand how these provisions should operate in practice. However, guidance of this nature cannot and should not seek to cover every possible circumstance. It will provide helpful principles and examples, but it is vital that landlords retain the ability to exercise reasonable judgment based on individual cases. For these reasons, I do not believe the amendment is necessary, and I hope the noble Earl will consider not moving it.

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Moved by

[The Earl of Kinnoull]

127: Clause 12, page 20, leave out lines 28 to 31
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to remove a requirement on tenants to have pet damage insurance.

[The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 127, I shall speak also to Amendments 128, 129 and 130. I remind the Committee of some different interests this time, in that I am a director of Alpha Insurance Analysts, which operates around £1 billion of premiums at Lloyd’s, and I have share ownership in Hiscox Group.

The thrust of everything in this bit of the Bill is all about pets. I am very keen on pets in general being in houses. As I pointed out, pets are usually allowed in my Scottish interest. When I looked at the insurance provisions, I was looking very carefully with a professional eye, and I wanted to try to tweak four separate areas that all needed something. First, there was the proposition that the tenant would buy insurance, then that would be all right. Secondly, there was the proposition that the landlord could buy insurance and bill that back to the tenant. Thirdly, there was the possibility of aligning the England and Wales law with what happens in Scotland, where, of course, I have a lot of experience. Fourthly, there was the knotty issue of the definition of “premium”, over which I have had many arguments in many jurisdictions over many years—and I apologise in advance for disagreeing with counsel on that.

Amendment 127 is on the first of those things in my list. There is no market today for insurance where a tenant goes out privately to buy insurance. There certainly will not have been a single cent of premium written in the UK market up to 31 December last year nor in any of the continental European non-life insurance markets, with which I am extremely familiar. One or two products have appeared on the market that provide some sort of partial cover—and I shall try to describe some of that.

I am very grateful, in saying this, to the department and the people supporting the Minister, because we have had a funny tour around this issue. We even had one exciting moment when an insurer that I had never heard of, which turned out to be an insurance company based in Anguilla, of recent formation, was keen to sell insurance to British people, although of course there would have been no protection under the Financial Services Compensation Scheme or from the insurance ombudsman, let alone all the tax and regulatory problems with an Anguilla insurer trying to settle a claim in the UK.

Leaving aside that exciting insurer, one or two insurers have come along, but they want to insure only against accidental damage, however it is dressed up. When talking about insurers, it is important to understand the difference between the insurance carrier, which takes the bet, and the insurance intermediary, which puts exciting things on the web to try to entice you. These are all insurance intermediaries, and there is only one carrier that is identified at the moment, which is under half the size of the legal minimum for an insurance carrier, if you are forming a new one, and does not appear at all on any of the lists of allowed insurers that major brokers have. It is exceptionally small and very weak.

The problem with the cover of the three policies that appear online at the moment is that they are limited to accidental damage. In one of them, accidental damage is defined as

“unexpected damage which happens suddenly and has not been caused on purpose or inevitably”.

I immediate think that that does not sound like very good cover. The other one goes a lot further. It says that the policy is

“not for damage caused by everyday wear and tear. For example, if a dog scratches at your door every day, this is not covered, while if a pet pulls down curtains that causes damage to a wall this would be covered”.

Of course, that is a vanishingly small percentage of the loss costs likely to be caused by a pet. Most of the losses from pets will be to do with chewing or infestations—I look at my noble friend Lord Trees in the hope that he will tell us all a bit more about infestations later on.

The difficulty of trying to legislate so that a landlord can say to someone, “You can have a pet as long as you buy an insurance policy”, and there being no actual policy of insurance that exists, or no reasonable one, is that it is what is sometimes called an Italian torpedo—a legal trick whereby you started a case in a different jurisdiction to slow everything down, and the initial case never gets decided. It would mean that the landlord could ask the tenant to find insurance that he knew did not exist and the pet would never be allowed into the property. That is not the intention of this Bill, so it would be quite wrong to let this option go forward. That is why Amendment 127 seeks to get rid of that option. It is not a probing amendment—it is a real amendment.

I turn to Amendment 129 next, only because the amendments have appeared a bit out of order. It is a probing amendment, and it covers the second issue on insurance, which is whether the landlord could buy insurance. Here I am much more hopeful. I should point out that this type of insurance also does not exist at the moment, but I have spoken to the underwriting managers of at least two of the big players in the UK markets and left those conversations feeling that it was quite possible that this type of insurance could come into existence—in fact, in reviewing the internet, there is some evidence that it might. It will start with this accidental damage problem, so it is not a complete cover; therefore, landlords might not choose to exercise that option because it does not really exist.

Therefore, I feel it is unfair to ask landlords to go to the market to buy insurance, and they might not want to. The insurance would therefore be a terrible situation, where a landlord is being asked about a pet and the tenant cannot buy the insurance because it does not exist—at least not in a reasonable form—and nor can the landlord because it is at a very early stage. But I felt that should stay on the statute book because I believe that something helpful might come along. I believe also that the type of insurance that will come along will be a small layer just above the deposit that people pay anyway; at the moment, it is a five-week deposit.

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[Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)]

My Lords, when the Renters (Reform) Bill was originally proposed, Battersea asked landlords what policies or incentives would make them more likely to consider offering pet-friendly properties—that is an important point to bear in mind—and out of all the different policies and incentives, the two most popular were requiring tenants to hold insurance to cover any damage, or changing the Tenant Fees Act to allow the landlord to charge for a deep clean and fumigation at the end of the tenancy. I acknowledge that there are concerns regarding availability of insurance to cover pet damage in line with the requirements currently set out in the Bill. However, having talked to those with expertise in the sector, I believe the insurance market will adapt to new legislation, as it has in the past with cyberinsurance under the Data Protection Act 2018 and professional indemnity insurance for cladding remediation under the Building Safety Act 2022. I think there is already evidence of insurers responding to market demand, with the letting insurance providers Paymentshield and Addept Insurance updating their tenants’ content policies to include pet damage cover. I am aware of other providers that are in the process of—

[The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)]

One of the things I read was that Paymentshield is offering accidental damage only; I read out the definition of accidental damage and that is not really any cover at all. I am sorry; I do not know whether the noble Lord was talking to insurance underwriters or brokers, but I can tell him that the underwriting community in the insurance world is absolutely solid on this.

[Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)]

My Lords, my general point was that I believe the market would adapt in time, because that is the purpose of legislation—to push that market on. I know there are other insurers that are looking at pet damage insurance products to bring to the marketplace. We will have to see if it happens, but I very much hope that it would. I understand the fears from landlords that pets may damage their properties, but I also do not believe that pet deposits are the solution to this area, because they are unevenly applied and unaffordable to many.

Finally, I just want to make the general point that research has shown that fears around pet damage are often largely unfounded. Again, research that was commissioned by Battersea with the University of Huddersfield showed that more than three out of four landlords did not encounter any damage caused by pets in their rental properties. So there is very low risk, and, alongside evidence showing that pet owners tend to stay longer in their properties, this demonstrates that renting to pet owners can be financially beneficial to landlords in the long run.

[The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)]

I put to the noble Lord this point about the Italian torpedo. I hope he will accept that there is currently no reasonable insurance solution available for a tenant—there is none. So, if a landlord says, “I need you to go out and buy a tenants’ insurance policy”, thinking, sneakily, that as one does not exist, the tenant will look forever and will never be allowed a pet, would that be an acceptable solution for the noble Lord?

[Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)]

I go back to the point that the market may not exist at the moment but the legislation is designed to push this market along. I very much hope that by the time the Bill becomes law, that market will have adapted.

[The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)]

But if the market does not come into being—I made the point about insurance not being available for inevitabilities—we will have created through the Bill a route for landlords to quite simply prevent tenants having pets.

[Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)]

That is probably a bridge we ought to cross when we come to it.

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[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I have already answered the noble Lord’s question: the idea of this specific pet insurance is to encourage landlords to accept tenants with pets. That is what the clause is there to do: to try to incentivise and encourage landlords to accept pets as part of the tenancy.

[The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)]

My Lords, it has been a very interesting debate. I thank those who have contributed to it all round, and I will try to mention everyone. I thought I should start by answering the question of the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, about whether there is a difference in the insurance policy between a pet and a human being. The answer is yes, because the provisions of a standard insurance policy in the UK would present two problems for the pet. The first is a total exclusion for infestation and insects—so the sort of problems the noble Lord, Lord Trees, was talking about would be taken out straight away. Secondly, there is usually a heavy exclusion for gradually operating causes, so that would take out chewing and other things pets might do. For centuries, or at least a century and a bit, there have been policies that are aware of pet damage issues. It is not just a landlord and tenant issue; it is a first-party issue that someone might start claiming for a dog chewing a Sheraton chair. Is that a thing you can claim for on insurance—yes or no? The answer has always been no.

This is the core of the problem, which I will finish on. I did not have the good grace to speak to Amendments 284 and 285, but they are in fact good ways of getting at the very problem I have been describing. I am not sure that I have been clear enough; it is not a question of the market eventually creating something, because it is not insurance if it is inevitable. The difficulty of “first dollar in” protection for a dog chewing something is that it is inevitable that there will be a loss. It is not something that any proper underwriting manager will ever say yes to. Lots of brokers will be very interested in saying yes, because they will see premium volumes and commissions to be earned as well, but underwriting managers will not, and I am therefore extremely negative on the prospects of there ever being a comprehensive policy for a tenant to insure against their pet damaging a flat. That is why I have been concentrating on trying to find other ways of doing this—that are going to be the enabler, which I want, of pets coming into flats.

On Amendment 130, what the Minister has just said is very helpful, in that that can at least be referred to. Although people in the insurance market will carry on knocking spots off each other about the definition of “premium”, the Minister’s helpful words at the Dispatch Box will settle that issue, and we can leave Amendment 130 to one side.

Amendment 129 tries to add something currently missing from the Bill, which is a better definition of what the landlord is able to buy and give the bill to the tenant for. It seems that, at the moment, the landlord could buy £5 million-worth of cover and ask the tenant to pay for it, which would be very expensive. There is more to be discussed on that, and I hope the Minister will agree to meet with me to carry on going through these various insurance issues.

On what the Minister said about the complexities of administering an eight-week deposit versus a five-week one, the great thing about having Scotland next door to us is that we can look over the border and see how complex that has proved to be. In fact, it is perfectly easy to handle. All the various agents who are active in Scotland—the big ones, anyway—are also active in England. I assume that they already have the systems to manage this. I do not feel that the deposit system, which is so successful in Scotland, could not be applied and be successful in England and Wales.

Finishing on Amendment 127, my advice to the House is that we will not get there by having this type of insurance. It would be very unfortunate if this went on to the statute book and it was possible for a landlord to use what I have described as an Italian torpedo approach to prevent people who want to have a pet in their home from doing so, simply by asking for the impossible. Therefore, I look forward to engaging with the Minister and her excellent team again, in the hope that we can find a way forward.

In the absence of anything else, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 127 withdrawn.