Tenancies (Reform) Bill

Karen Buck Excerpts

Friday 28th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Gilbert]

Well, we can look forward it. [Laughter.]

Rogue landlords should not be able to deprive tenants of the fundamental right to enjoy their property in the way we all hope to enjoy the place we live in. However, we should also remember that section 21 notices are not the only possession rights that landlords have; they will retain their section 8 rights as well, meaning that tenants who break their agreement with the landlord—through antisocial behaviour, for example—could still be legitimately evicted. This would instil balance and fairness in the relationship. Good tenants and good landlords would be protected, and landlords who have problems with rogue tenants would still have legal redress.

Landlords would also benefit from the local authority’s ability to be an independent judge of legitimate complaints. Colleagues will be perhaps too familiar with improvement and hazard notices. I have come across them many times in my casework, so I am sure others have as well. These notices would act as a fail-safe in respect of perhaps the biggest concern landlords have: whether people can make spurious claims to stay in a property. By ensuring that complaints are verified by the local authority, good landlords will be protected.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

I support the Bill and the comments people have made, but does the hon. Gentleman share my concern that environmental health officers, who are the unsung heroes of action against the significant minority of landlords who keep tenants in bad conditions, are under enormous pressure, as local authorities face up to a 50% reduction in their funding; that there is a massive variation in the ability of EHOs to issue hazard notices and take enforcement action; and that none of this is properly recorded either? If we are to make these measures work, it has to be on the back of consistent and properly funded environmental health organisations.

[Stephen Gilbert]

I do not disagree with the hon. Lady’s fundamental point: many EHOs and local authority departments are facing significant pressures. However, there is a plus side to the Bill. At the moment, we cannot track improvements to housing stock, because we are not clear where the poor housing stock is. As renters come forward, challenging their landlords under the provisions in the Bill, and as their complaints are verified by environmental health departments, we will be able to track improvements across the country and see the general uplifting of standards. I absolutely share her view that we need to resource local authorities properly so that they can perform their statutory duties, and of course EHOs are no exception, but the Bill gives us the opportunity to ensure continued improvement in the housing stock and to ensure that poor conditions cannot endure.

To conclude, it is hard-working people living in poor conditions and too afraid to speak out for fear of eviction who would most benefit from this Bill—we all see them in our surgeries. It would introduce a proportionate and timely system of legal redress to tenants who otherwise would live in fear of unfair eviction by those few rogue landlords across the country. That is why I will be joining my colleagues today in supporting the Bill.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I hope that the Bill makes good progress today, and I compliment the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather) for introducing it and for being very brief. I hope that all other Members will be suitably brief, as it is perfectly possible for someone to say why they support the Bill in 10 minutes, and it is also perfectly possible for those with doubts about it to express those succinctly in less than 10 minutes, so we should be able to conclude these proceedings today. I hope that the House will give the Bill a Second Reading so that we can make some progress on behalf of the many people in this country who are frightened of their living conditions. We should bear that fact in mind today.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Brent Central on securing her position in the ballot and compliment her on her work on many other issues, especially her chairing of the all-party group on refugees. We should all thank her for being an exemplary chair of that effective group.

I think that my constituency has more private renters than almost anywhere else in the country, as more than 30%—27,000 tenants—of the community lives in the private rented sector. As my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) said, there is a wider debate about the need for significantly more legislation to improve the conditions of those in the private rented sector, including over lengths of tenancies and rent levels. I recognise, however, that the Bill is strictly limited to one aspect of the security of tenure of people living in the private rented sector.

At the moment, someone taking a flat in the private rented sector will normally get it for six months. They have no control over the rent, and in my community, as indeed in many across London, rents are going up far faster than anything else—far faster than the rate of inflation and certainly far faster than wages, and way above the benefit cap level. That means that there is social cleansing in all of central London, and now even in the London suburbs, as people are forced to move away because they can no longer afford to stay in their flat.

[Ms Buck]

One reason why I was unfortunately slightly late in arriving this morning—I had hoped to hear the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather) introducing what I believe is an important Bill—was that I was dealing with the eviction of a nurse working for the Imperial hospital trust whose landlord has just put up the rent on her property, which also had disrepair problems. The local authority has offered her a property that would involve her making a two-hour commute, so she will almost certainly no longer be able to continue working for the hospital. Not only will she have to move yet again, but the hospital is likely to lose a qualified nurse.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I thank my hon. Friend for that point. Sadly, it is a familiar story that when families or individuals are evicted and forced to move a long way away, they cannot continue their job. If they are desperate to keep their children in their existing primary school, those children may be forced to undertake journeys that are totally inappropriate for someone of their age. When I get on the train—a very busy one—in the morning at Finsbury Park station to come here, it is depressing to see the number of primary school children coming to the station. They do so because they have been forced to move a long distance away and are making the journey to try to retain their place in the local school and their part in the local community.

We need stability in our London communities, and that will be best achieved through the proper regulation of the private rented sector. The Bill would give tenants protection in respect of the poor conditions in which they are too often forced to live. I have experience of tenants complaining about the conditions in their flat, such as dangerous electrical conditions, inadequate heating, poor-quality windows, badly fitting doors, leaking roofs and excessive damp. Some of the places are so disgusting that they would do credit to Rachman, quite honestly.

I agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) said about environmental health officers. They are the unsung heroes of the time through the work that they try to do. However, if people complain to the environmental health service, their landlord may then end the tenancy, meaning that those people are evicted and then have great difficulty finding anywhere else to live. In some cases, they could be declared as voluntary homeless, rather than involuntary homeless.

Some tenants believe that by withholding rent, they can force their landlord to carry out repairs. That might work sometimes, if the landlord decides that the repairs should be done so that they can get the rent in the normal way, but that is not a good system because the tenant does not have the protection they think they do for retaining their tenancy. The issue must be the protection of the tenant where there are bad conditions, and a local authority’s ability, through the environmental health service, to enforce decent, safe and sustainable conditions for the tenants, and that is what the Bill is designed to achieve.

This is no small matter. According to Shelter, there were 200,000 evictions over the past year because of complaints about environmental conditions, so I think it is time that we—the House of Commons; Parliament—did something about that and provided protection. A YouGov survey commissioned by Shelter found that one in eight tenants had not asked for repairs to be carried out in their home or challenged a rent increase because of fear of eviction. If one thinks of the size of the private rented sector in Britain, that means that a very large number of people are so frightened about the security aspect of having somewhere to live that they have not dared to exercise their legitimate rights to complain. One in 50 tenants has been evicted or served notice in the past year because they complained to their local council or landlord about problems in their homes. Certain groups are more likely to suffer retaliatory eviction: 10% of black and ethnic-minority households and 5% of households in receipt of housing benefit have experienced the problem. It is particularly prevalent in London, which is a very high-demand area, but it is not exclusively a London problem.

We need to pass the Bill today and then bring it into law as a sign that Parliament has taken account of the fundamental changes that are taking place in the housing market. The number of people living in owner-occupied accommodation is falling nationally—in my constituency, it amounts to fewer than 30% of households—and unless we offer decent security and good-quality conditions to people in the private rented sector, we pay the price. We pay the price in terms of under-achievement in schools and the disruption of children’s lives throughout their educational careers, and because if families are forced endlessly to move, they often, as we heard, lose jobs and opportunities as a result.

Although limited and specific in its requirements, the Bill would mean an awful lot to an awful lot of people. It would give them the security that they need. It would say to bad landlords—not all landlords are bad but, sadly, a considerable number are—“We have noticed what you are doing, we are on your case, and if you are going to make money out of letting a property, you will have to maintain it to a good standard rather than blaming your tenants for your inadequacy in looking after it.” I hope that the House passes the Bill today and we get it through before the end of this Parliament, so that we can say that we have done something for those people. Tenants in the private rented sector, of whom there are 27,000 in my constituency, deserve the same security as those in council and owner-occupied properties. They deserve to be able to live in decent, safe, clean, dry and secure accommodation, and I hope that we can achieve that today.