Renters’ Rights Bill

Lord Hacking Excerpts

Tuesday 14th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

I do not know if the noble Lord is wanting to speak. I am perfectly prepared to give way to him, although I seem to have the Floor of the House.

The noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, made a very powerful case, which was well supported by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. The noble Lord and others will remember that I supported him on this measure in Committee, and I think also on Report. It covers a wider ground than just the landlord who has been unable to sell. There is another ground, where the landlord has got possession of a property to put members of their family in. I cited the example of a landlord having done that for, let us say, parents coming in, one of whom then has a stroke, meaning that the landlord then needs to do something with the property that involves putting it back on the market. In that situation, the landlord is penalised in exactly the same way as when a landlord fails in a genuine attempt to sell, as the noble Lord has described.

In Committee, and I think also on Report, I proposed a better way of dealing with this problem: a prohibition on any landlord putting property on the market again at a higher price than the price at the time of the change of ownership. I should have succeeded in that argument, but I did not. However, I am certainly supporting the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, as supported by noble Lord, Lord Pannick. I hope that your Lordships have heard the arguments from the noble Lords and will support them on this issue.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Motion D1 in my name, which the Minister referred to sympathetically at the beginning of our debate.

As we have heard, the Bill currently precludes a landlord who gives notice to a tenant because he wants to sell from re-letting that property for 12 months if that sale falls through. The Government want all tenants to be protected against abusive eviction by landlords, and I have no difficulty with that principle. However, in the case of shared owners, there are already safeguards against such abuse that are not there for conventional landlords, and their sales are more likely to fall through, through no fault of their own.

The amendment exempting shared owners from this provision was carried on Report in your Lordships’ House by the largest majority of any amendment to the Bill. While sympathy was expressed by Ministers in the other place for the plight of shared owners, the amendment was overturned there. Last week, the Government tabled their Motion asking your Lordships not to insist on that amendment. On 10 October, the Minister followed that up by writing to all Peers, hoping that they would support her Motion not to insist. Then last week, we had a Damascene conversion, and here I obviously had more good fortune than the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell. I am most grateful to the Minister for the time she spent with me on this last week, and indeed earlier, and to Matthew Pennycook and the officials. The amendment in my name is the outcome of those discussions and represents a deal that I can accept.

To briefly summarise the case, shared owners are social housing residents. They own a portion of their property and rent the rest of it from the housing association. They purchased a share of their home because they could not afford to buy on the open market. They are a distinct, legally identifiable group of people, and they are actually precluded from subletting without permission from their registered provider.