Private Landlords and Letting and Managing Agents (Regulation) Bill

Margot James Excerpts

Friday 25th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mary Macleod (Brentford and Isleworth) (Con)]

It is an immense pleasure to see you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker. I know that you will do the Chair and the House proud with fairness, dignity and grace.

It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall), who made some important points about the Bill. The private rental market is a vital asset to this country, especially London. For a Member who represents a London constituency, it is important to discuss and debate it. For millions who cannot afford to buy, who are saving for a deposit or who just want some flexibility, the private rental market is critical.

I have been a landlord in the past, and I have also been a tenant, as I am sure many Members have. As you probably know, Madam Deputy Speaker, I was born across the river in St Thomas’s hospital in London and spent my first years in Battersea, but then had all my education in Scotland. The first place I rented was at Glasgow university. After graduating I came straight back to London, where I feel I belong, and I have rented properties in Shepherd’s Bush, Acton, Westminster and Chiswick. I have been a tenant nine times, and I hope I have been a good tenant. I cannot remember any disorderly behaviour on my part, so I hope I have been seen as a good tenant and a good landlord.

In the London borough of Hounslow, 42% of households rent in the social and private sectors, which is 10% higher than the national average. We want to build more housing in London and encourage more private landowners to rent out property. What worries me about the Bill is that it might prevent people from doing so.

It is interesting to see how important issues in the private rented sector are to people. In my constituency there are 93,844 residents in 48,500 households. I have received a total of 14,742 cases on housing, but only 35 of those have involved private landlords. Social housing has made up a lot more of them—nearer 500 cases. That shows that for my residents, the important issues are to do not with private landlords but with social housing, whether waiting lists, the state of houses, the state of temporary or sheltered accommodation, repairs or housing associations.

I believe that the hon. Member for Mansfield (Sir Alan Meale) has good intentions to drive up standards. That is what we want, but I do not believe that the Bill is the right way to go about it. There are good landlords. When he talked about the percentage of tenants who are unsatisfied, I wondered how many of our constituents would be satisfied with us if we did a survey.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is talking about the effect of rogue landlords on tenants. Does she agree with my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) that the further regulation suggested in the Bill would be far more likely to trap decent, smaller landlords who are trying to do a good job by tenants, and that rogue landlords who are responsible for the problems that she is talking about would probably evade it? The Bill would therefore be ineffective where it really counts.

[Mary Macleod]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and she is right to say that we want to encourage more private sector landlords. We need more landlords, and I do not want them to be put off by additional costs, regulation and red tape. In any case, as my hon. Friend said, rogue landlords would no doubt find their way around that anyway. I do not want to impose cost, red tape and more regulation. The Conservative party is about rolling back the state and having less regulation, and some of the extra charges would lead to landlords having to impose higher rents at a time when the cost of living is critical and we want more housing.

We have heard from many hon. Members and the Minister about the work that the Government have done. As the hon. Member for Corby (Andy Sawford) said, substantial legislation is already in place, and we certainly do not need or want any more. We heard about the Communities and Local Government Committee, and my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) said that we should simplify legislation. That is the right thing to do. My hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) mentioned making the provisions consumer-led, and as someone who came from the business world prior to entering this place, I firmly believe in that. We do not want to live in a nanny state; we want to create a competitive market and—as my hon. Friend put to the House so well—people are intelligent enough to make those comparisons.

If we consider the recommendations in the Bill, even the national register of private landlords can and will be a financial burden on landlords—a cost that would no doubt be passed on to tenants, which we do not want. Regulation of private sector letting agents and managing agents is again about imposing more and more burdens on local authorities, increasing costs and reducing the choice and availability of accommodation offered to tenants. I certainly would not want that across London and the rest of the country.

The Minister mentioned the things that the Government have done, which are important. They recently announced a tenants package, which means that we do not need to introduce new regulation for that. The package includes the tenants charter, which will help to promote awareness among tenants about what to expect, such as transparency of letting agents fees. We heard about the Government-endorsed model tenancy agreement that written tenancy agreements can be based on.

I had hoped that the hon. Member for Mansfield would mention another issue that has been brought to my attention in my constituency many times. Landlords have had to take tenants to court to evict them because of advice that the tenants received from local councils. If tenants want to be seen as homeless and get housing support—even though under their tenancy agreement they know they should leave the property with a month’s notice, or whatever—they have been told to overstay so that they have to be taken to court and evicted. Then they will not be seen as having made themselves intentionally homeless. I had hoped that the issue would be addressed by the Bill, but it was not.

I will conclude my remarks because I want to give my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Margot James) the last few moments to say a few words. My hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset said that we should be making life better, easier and happier for citizens of this country, and that in North East Somerset they would do that over a pint of cider. In Brentford and Isleworth it would be over a cup of Teapigs tea, which is made in Brentford, or a pint of London Pride or Chiswick Bitter. I hope that we in this House can do everything possible to make life better, easier and happier for our constituents. I therefore cannot support the Bill.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

May I add my voice to those of others who have expressed their delight in seeing you in the Chair today, Madam Deputy Speaker, and may I congratulate you on your election?

I would like to draw the attention of Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, in which I have declared a property that I rent out. It is not really applicable to this debate, because it works on the basis of short-term holiday lets. Although this is not officially an interest, my partner owns two small properties in London, which she rents out and has done for some considerable time. I must say that she is a model landlord, who has not put her rent up at all in the last three years. I have observed at first hand some of the difficulties that a landlord experiences on the controversial issue of the balance of rights as between landlords and tenants. None the less, my constituency brings it home to me that the balance is a fine one, and that some tenants are victimised by landlords. That is why I sympathise with the intent behind the Bill and why I congratulate the hon. Member for Mansfield (Sir Alan Meale) on bringing it forward.

Overall, however, I feel that the balance is about right at the moment. My partner would certainly not agree, but that is my view. I believe that further burdening landlords and their letting agents with a registration scheme over and above the voluntary schemes that already exist and that are already quite effective would have the effect of disincentivising people who own small properties from renting them out up and down the country.

We all know that we face a critical housing shortage at this time. I need hardly remind Members that between 1997 and 2010, there was a woeful lack of new house building. We inherited that situation, but despite the huge improvements of the last 12 months, which have seen a record increase in house building, we still have a long way to go in providing decent homes for the many people who are on housing waiting lists and cannot find private rented accommodation. For us to pass further legislation that would, in the opinion of many, act as a disincentive to the private rented sector at a time of such housing need would, I think, be a retrograde step. Along with my Conservative colleagues, I shall therefore oppose the Bill.

In the short time available, let me cover some aspects of regulation and legislation that already give protection to tenants in the private housing sector. Private sector letting agents are subject to consumer protection law, while councils have powers to tackle rogue landlords and their agents. I am sure many hon. Members would agree that we would like to see local authorities using these powers more assertively than they sometimes do. None the less, the powers are there, and I am not a believer in bringing in new regulation and new laws just because existing provisions, regulations and laws are not being used effectively. The first port of call should surely be to use existing legislation and regulation before we start burdening the whole system with yet more regulation. A registration provision of the sort in the Bill only adds to that burden of regulation.

At least half the private landlords in this country already belong to a professional organisation, of which the Association of Residential Letting Agents and the National Association of Estate Agents are but two examples. Such bodies have provisions for codes of best practice, to which letting agents and landlords must subscribe if they are to join them. I think it much better for us to try to increase the number of letting agents who subscribe to those schemes and organisations than to attempt—