Renters’ Rights Bill

Lord Black of Brentwood Excerpts

Tuesday 6th May 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Black of Brentwood]

118: Clause 12, page 19, line 12, at end insert—
“(d) the landlord may not review or withdraw consent once given.”

[Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to introduce this important group on pet ownership, which is a subject of real concern and interest to hundreds of thousands of families that live in rented accommodation and desperately want to share their lives with a pet. I will speak to Amendments 118 and 125, which are also supported by my noble friend Lord Lexden and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, to whom I am very grateful. I am also grateful to my noble friend Lady Coffey for adding her name to Amendment 125. She brings great authority to this debate as a former Defra Secretary of State with a long-standing interest in and commitment to animal welfare.

I also support Amendments 119 and 126, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, to which I have happily added my name. I declare my interest as a patron of International Cat Care. I am very grateful to Battersea Dogs & Cats Home, Cats Protection and other charities in the sector for their support and the excellent briefing they have provided us, as well as to other organisations, such as Mars Petcare, which has shared crucial research on the benefits of pet ownership and does so much for animal welfare.

I will set out the background to these amendments. We are a nation of pet lovers. Around 13.5 million homes in the UK include a dog and 12.5 million—mine included—are graced by a cat. Unfortunately, however, pet ownership is all too often limited to those who own their own home, causing huge anguish to the millions of families that rent but also want to share their lives with a pet. In 2024, Cats Protection found that over half a million households that would like a cat do not have one because their rental agreements forbid it. Research from Battersea Dogs & Cats Home shows that only 7% of private landlords list their property as pet friendly—an incredibly low number when we consider that, according to the same survey, 76% of tenants already own or aspire to own a pet.

Correcting that imbalance is so important for a number of reasons. There is the obvious link between rental restrictions and pet homelessness, with housing issues cited as the second most common reason that pets are relinquished to Battersea. Last year, Cats Protection took in the equivalent of three cats each day due to landlords not allowing them in their properties—part of a wider crisis of pets having to be given up. At Second Reading, I told the story of Zeke, a cat that arrived in Battersea just 24 hours before his first birthday after his owners faced the heartbreaking choice between finding an alternate rental property or giving him up to a shelter. His story is far from unique: across the UK, thousands of animals urgently need loving homes, yet countless responsible would-be pet owners in the private rental sector are being unfairly prevented from adopting or finding suitable housing due to overly restrictive tenancy agreements.

It is not just our pets that suffer as a result; public health is impacted too. Research conducted by Mars Petcare has found that pet ownership saves the NHS approximately £2.5 billion per year, with pet owners making 15% fewer visits to a doctor. The physical benefits of taking a dog for a walk or a run every day are obvious, but those of us who own pets know it is the mental health and well-being aspects that have the greatest impact. Pets provide people with companionship and loyalty—particularly for those who live alone—help them to meet new people, add structure to their day and offer unconditional love and support. Children also benefit from understanding the responsibilities of caring for a dog or cat and learning how to interact safely with animals. Pet ownership is also often an indicator of a responsible and reliable tenant, which is very relevant to this debate. Research from Battersea showed that three-quarters of landlords surveyed did not observe any discernible increase in wear and tear to their property due to pets.

For all these reasons, I am delighted that the Government are committed to encouraging responsible pet ownership across the private rented sector and I strongly support the ambition of this section of the Bill: providing tenants with the right to request a pet—a request that cannot be unreasonably refused by a landlord. My probing amendments today seek simply to tighten up certain aspects of legislation to guarantee that the pet provisions in the Bill are as effective as possible and that the laudable ambition and clear intention of this legislation is fully realised.

But we are not quite there yet. As it stands, I fear that there are loopholes in the Bill and that landlords will have too much room to deny most requests, risking a serious and unnecessary burden on tenants, the ombudsman and, ultimately, the courts. The amendments I have tabled will provide certainty for tenants and clarity for landlords, and will ensure that the Bill is not a missed opportunity to unlock thousands of homes for pet owners across the country.

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[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I understand the issue and I will respond in due course.

[Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to all who have taken part in this debate. I always knew it would be an interesting debate, and so it has proved. I did not know until we had the appearance of Wilberforce the snake that it would be quite so wide-ranging, but that has certainly been the case.

One of the interesting things about this debate is that normally in Committee there is some disagreement with what the Government are trying to do. There has not really been any disagreement today with what the Government are seeking to do here; we are just seeking to make their noble intentions as effective as possible. I am very pleased the Minister responded constructively and positively.

As my noble friend Lord Lexden said, opaque law can never be satisfactory law. The speeches from the noble Baronesses, Lady Miller and Lady Grender, the noble Lords, Lord Howard of Rising and Lord de Clifford, and others have underlined that there are too many uncertainties as things stand. In that most precious of relationships between a human and a pet, there needs to be certainty. This debate has brought that out.

My anxiety is that some of the amendments, including those from the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, and the noble Lord, Lord Howard of Rising, seek to import more loopholes into the Bill and to give landlords greater powers of veto. I am disappointed that my noble friend Lady Scott of Bybrook has fallen into that trap as well.

I thank the Minister for her comments, which were very constructive and positive. She spoke a number of times about guidance, including on consent and withdrawal of consent. I am not a lawyer and I do not pretend to understand the intricacies of the contractual obligation she talked about, but I am pleased to hear that they will be spelled out in accompanying guidance. Would she be prepared to talk to the animal charities involved in this sector about the drafts of that guidance and, similarly, about the guidance on the refusal of consent? Those will clearly be very important documents and those with day-to-day practical experience of the problems that arise in this area would be very good people to consult.

We will all be grateful to the Minister for saying, on the issue of superior landlords, that she will look at the quantum of data. Perhaps she could do that before we reach Report and let the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, have it so we can discuss whether there is any need for further amendments.

Finally, the amendment from the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, has strong support from all sides of the House, and he is absolutely right to bring it forward. The right to own a pet should be universal and not in any way dependent on the type of property someone lives in. I am very grateful to the Minister for saying that she will look further at this and give it consideration before Report. On that note, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 118 withdrawn.

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I am going to finish by briefly talking about Amendment 130, which seeks to define premiums. As I said, there are an enormous number of fights, or there have been in the past, over what the word “premium” means in English law. It is something that insurers, reinsurers and all sorts of people worry about the whole time, therefore it is best always to be absolutely clear what you mean. It is clear in my mind that in this Bill we mean “premium plus IPT”—that is, that the amount of money that can be reclaimed when the landlord buys the insurance is the insurance premium and the IPT as well. It is important to be clear about that, otherwise inevitably there will be questions put of tribunals and so on that are trying to worry about this sort of thing. They will not have the scars on my back that I have after 30 years of fiddling around in the insurance markets. So it should be made crystal clear, and that was the intention behind Amendment 130. I beg to move.

[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.

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Black, quoted from the University of Huddersfield’s excellent research, The Financial Impact of Pet Ownership in Rental Properties, which I have read in detail. One of the most surprising things is that there is more non-pet-related damage to properties from non-pet owners, which averaged at £215, than there is pet-related damage from pet owners. But perhaps the more relevant thing to this particular debate is that when there was damage: the tenant’s deposit fully covered the cost 38% of the time; the repair costs exceeded the deposit and the tenant covered the additional costs 18% of the time; and the repair costs exceeded the deposit and were covered by insurance 13% of the time—which is surprising given what the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, told us. So, more than 60% of the time, there was no problem at all. Only in a very small percentage of the time did the landlord find themselves out of pocket. The overall findings from this study were that it is a much-exaggerated fear rather than an actual problem.