Housing: Landlord and Tenant Legislation

Lord Best Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I am sure that the Law Commission pays enormous attention to what we say in the House. It will have heard what has been said and, if it thinks that that is a valuable investigation to undertake, I have no doubt that it will do so.

[Lord Best]

My Lords, I declare my housing interests as in the register and support the proposals of the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes. Does the Minister agree that it would be unwise to think of reforming landlord and tenant legislation to bring back security of tenure on an indefinite basis and rent controls, even though we face alarming rises in rents and some very bad landlords, because such a return would bring back the deterrent to institutional investment at a time when we badly need more money to come into rented housing? Would it not be better to use tax incentives and disincentives to reward good landlords and encourage investment by institutional investors?

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Best, in his question. Bringing back indefinite security of tenure and rent controls is not the right way forward. We need a vital and highly flexible private rented sector, and previous experience has shown that measures such as he has described act only to reduce supply and that does not help tenants. As I am sure he knows, changes were made to stamp duty in the 2010 Budget, and we already have a commitment to look at the rules on real estate investment trusts. These are important signals about the value that we place on such investment and on the private rented sector.