Philip Davies
Main Page: Philip Davies (Conservative - Shipley)(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Mike Thornton
Yes. I was discussing my colleague’s important Bill. [Interruption.]
Mike Thornton
We will start all over again. As I was saying, our duty to our constituents as MPs is often difficult where there are worries about triggering a revenge eviction by a rogue landlord. It is important to understand why we are introducing this measure.
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
It is an honour to be here today and to follow the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood) and to discuss the Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather). I congratulate her on securing such a high-profile place in the ballot, which I envy, and on her choice of Bill, her excellent speech and her approach to the subject. Her choice of Bill is important for two reasons. First, it is limited in scope. It recognises the importance of addressing the needs of millions of private renters, a matter of which I am very conscious, given the size of the private rented sector in my constituency—40% of all households in my constituency are in the private rented sector, a massive increase over recent years. That is surely, and very clearly, reflected in the support for this Bill outside this House shown in the large number of e-mails I have had from my constituents urging me to be here today, and the very strong campaigning efforts of various groups at national and local level. I pay tribute to Shelter, which has campaigned on this issue for many years and worked very closely with the hon. Lady on producing the Bill.
Generation Rent must also be congratulated on its vigorous campaigning efforts at national and local level. The Home Sweet Home campaign has been working on the ground in Brighton for many months, backed by Labour’s excellent parliamentary candidate and by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), who is in her place; I agree with much of what she said earlier. It is heartening to hear of tenants and residents taking action, influencing this place, and actively seeking to improve their families’ quality of home, education and life chances. Labour has been clear that for too long their needs have been totally ignored. That is why we have set out ambitious plans for reform of the sector, and I will come to those later.
The second reason this Bill is so important is that the issue it seeks to address—retaliatory eviction—is completely unacceptable and must surely be brought to an end. That is why the hon. Member for Brent Central has our support for its passage through the House.
In recent years, the private rented sector has grown massively in size, but also beyond recognition in terms of the demographics and the character of those who rent from private landlords. Nine million people now rent privately—more than those who rent a social home. Over a third have families with children, and nearly half are over the age of 35. Many people who are renting privately are doing so not out of choice but because they cannot get on the housing ladder or secure a socially rented home. Yet private rented accommodation is not the cheapest option—far from it. It is, in effect, the most expensive type of housing. On average, people who rent privately spend 41% of their income on housing. For those in the social rented sector, the figure is 30%, and for owner occupiers, it is 19%. However, the extra expense does not buy greater stability or higher standards. Someone who rents privately is more likely to live in a non-decent home than someone in any other tenure, yet they are spending 41% of their income to do so. A third of privately rented homes fail to meet the decent homes standard.
Two issues are at the heart of these proposals—standards and stability. For too long, renters have had to put up with a choice between keeping their home and accepting the poor conditions they are living in. As we have heard, there is currently no protection from eviction for renters who report poor conditions to their landlord or local authority. Shelter has estimated that over 200,000 renters have been evicted or served notice in the past year because they complained to their local council or their landlord about a problem in their home.
This kind of unacceptable action can have a really damaging impact on renters. It can damage the lives of families and the fabric of communities as people are uprooted from their homes with as little as two months’ notice, disrupting schooling, support networks of family and friends, and even access to health care. It means that renters feel unable to complain and are forced to put up with awful conditions.
Philip Davies
The hon. Lady was bandying about some rather exotic figures earlier. Can she verify those figures in the context of the English housing survey, which goes into detail as to why people are evicted?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Stephen Williams)
It is always a pleasure to follow the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), with whom I get on very well. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather) not just on securing a place in the ballot, which is, after all, a lottery, but on her wisdom and good sense in selecting such an important issue as the subject of her private Member’s Bill. I also thank her for the constructive way in which she has engaged with me and my departmental officials, to make sure that we would be able to support the Bill’s Second Reading, and for securing a cross-party coalition in support of the Bill, even including, as he himself acknowledged, the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner).
I thank Shelter for working constructively with me and officials at its head office in London. I have also worked very closely with Shelter officials in my own constituency of Bristol West. I also thank Acorn, a new group that works in Easton in my constituency, for campaigning on improving conditions in the private rented sector in general.
The hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood) has mentioned how the issue affects students, which is important in her constituency and in mine, so I would also like to thank the National Union of Students for meeting me to discuss the private rented sector. It has been a while since I had a constructive and friendly meeting with the NUS, but that was it and I hope it will be a hallmark of how we will go forward from hereon in.
Members have spoken of how important this issue is in their constituencies. The hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) has said that a large proportion of his constituents rent in the private sector, although his constituency is not in the top 20 in the country in that regard. I thank the House of Commons Library for giving me a table while the urgent question was taken. Several Members who have spoken have clearly done so because of the high proportion of tenants in their constituency who rent in the private rented sector. The constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central just makes it into the top 20—it is 20th in the table—with 32% of her constituents renting in the private rented sector. My own constituency of Bristol West comes second after Cities of London and Westminster. More than 40% of my constituents rent in the private rented sector, so this Bill is very important to me and the people I represent.
Philip Davies
I hear what the Minister is saying, but only as recently as last December he said:
“The Department does not, at the moment, have any comprehensive evidence that retaliatory eviction is a widespread problem.”—[Official Report, 18 December 2013; Vol. 572, c. 281WH.]
The Minister has just said that a high proportion of his constituents are renting in the private sector, but how is it that his Department used to have no evidence and now, all of a sudden, he seems to have all the evidence in the world?
Stephen Williams
I have just begun. I have not come to all the evidence in the world yet, but I assure my hon. Friend that I will give him some evidence. I acknowledge what he says, but a lot of the evidence is hidden. One of the issues is that people are afraid to make complaints about conditions in their property precisely because they fear receiving a section 21 notice.
The Government are committed to promoting a strong, thriving and professional private rented sector where good landlords can prosper and hard-working tenants enjoy decent standards and receive a service that represents value for money for their rent. After a long period of contraction, the sector is expanding strongly and more than 4 million households rent in the private rented sector. We think that is good for the economy and we want to see that trend continue, particularly as it allows flexibility for young people not only to move around for employment reasons as they develop their careers, but to move up the housing ladder as their income expands. That is what I did when I moved from a one-bedroom bedsit to a two-bedroom bedsit, then to a one-bedroom flat and then finally buying at the age of 31.
We also want to see more purpose-built private rented properties, which is, after all, the norm in our fellow European states. That is why we have invested £1 billion in a build to rent fund, which provides development-phased finance to large-scale private rented sector developments that will deliver up to 10,000 new homes for private sector rent. Our housing guarantee scheme will support up to £10 billion-worth of investment in large-scale private rented projects and additional affordable housing.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
Before I start, I should draw the attention of the House to an interest declared in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. As I have made clear before, I am a landlord, or an accidental landlord as I think it was described by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) in his speech. I am also a tenant. In fact, I am a tenant in two places and landlord in one, so I am more of a tenant than a landlord. I thought I should confirm that before I start. I am also delighted to confirm that my tenants seem quite happy with everything and I have certainly never had to even consider evicting them. I have also not been evicted myself. That is probably a good thing all around.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather) on introducing the Bill. She was very lucky in the ballot. Not only has she brought forward a Bill, she has persuaded the Government to abandon everything they have ever believed in up until this point. Her powers of persuasion are clearly very good. although they may not quite have worked on me yet. I have been listening carefully and I note that we have had about two-and-a-quarter hours of contributions to the debate, all from people who are in favour of the Bill. There are about two hours left, so we do not quite have the time to cover all the points, but I will try to go through as many as I can in the time allowed.
Should I ever need to sell my property or move into it myself, I would need to ask my tenants to leave and find another place to live, not out of revenge or retaliation, but for reasons that have nothing to do with them but are a fact of life. The whole point of a tenancy is that one person rents from another person for a period. Some tenancies can last for a long time, but the only guaranteed length of time is that in the contract. That is clear to all parties and is the whole basis of the rented sector.
Should my tenants decide they would like a bigger property or to move out of London, they would not tell me they are leaving. There is nothing I can do about that, apart from trying to find new tenants to take over from them as quickly as possible to maintain the income to cover the costs of the property and hoping very much that the new tenants are as good as my current tenants. So here we have the principle of simple economics, despite there being plenty of regulation doing its best to interfere with it.
I have a property, somebody wants to live in it and for an agreed price and term, we make an arrangement for them to do just that. That is what we are talking about. The legalities, however, can be rather complex. I have taken advice from, and am grateful to, John Midgley, the enfranchisement and property litigation partner at Seddons solicitors. I have also taken advice from other organisations within the private rented sector, because they understand these matters well. I have also seen myriad briefings and reports on the subject.
In law, when a tenant wants to leave a property after the agreed time, they just leave. In theory, they pay their last month’s rent, hand over the keys, get their deposit back, or part of it, and walk away. They just abide by the terms of the lease for the term of the notice period, and then they are free to go. In fact, even if they do not pay their rent, they often just leave. It is then up to the landlord to decide what, if anything, they do to recover the money. The tenant does not have to give any reason for leaving—they just can leave—but that is not the case for landlords. That is a clear example of the already in-built bias in favour tenants.
The tenants have no obligation to say why they are leaving or to give notice months in advance. They can just leave and say goodbye. This leaves landlords at a disadvantage, because they will normally want to re-let the property to maintain their income, in many cases to cover a mortgage, and they might well have had little notice that the tenants planned to vacate the property. Yet landlords have to serve notice on tenants to get them out. In the case of a no-fault situation, under an assured shorthold tenancy, where the landlord just needs to get the property back, for whatever reason, notice under section 21 of the Housing Act 1988 needs to be served by the landlord on the tenant in order to bring the letting formally to an end. Only after that can the landlord instigate possession proceedings if the tenant fails to leave as requested.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend makes a good point, although, in fairness, the point has been made by others that there are good landlords and less-than-good landlords, and good tenants and poor tenants who leave properties in a terrible state and without paying. I do not see this as a one-sided issue. I do not think it is all in favour of the landlord, as opposed to the tenant. That is not my reading of the picture.
I must say in passing that those who claim there is a terrible bias in the system owing to problems of supply and demand are the same people who do not want to tackle immigration, which is one of the main reasons there is so much demand for property. If they really wanted to tackle the root causes of any imbalance in the market, they might at least be consistent and approve policies on immigration that would do some of the job they want to do through regulation.
Jeremy Corbyn
On the subject of supply and demand, what does the hon. Gentleman think about the vast numbers of properties deliberately kept empty in London as part of land-banking, which denies people somewhere to live and jacks up the price for everybody else?
Philip Davies
I cannot speak for the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. He had the opportunity to speak earlier, but he cut himself short; he could have expanded at greater length on the problem of land-banking in his constituency. I do not want to be drawn off course. I am being dragged away and asked to speak at length about something, but I would rather stick as closely as I can to the meat of the Bill. I am sure that everybody would want me to do that.
Philip Davies
If the hon. Gentleman has other areas he wants me to expand into, I will be happy to indulge him, but I am not sure I want to go down that route.
Stephen Pound
On the subject of meat, the hon. Gentleman is well known for his prodigious appetite for research. Where in his last comment is there any link to the wording of the Bill? I cannot see any connection between his comments and what the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather) is seeking to help with.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
I do not think we have to worry about that.
Philip Davies
I was merely pointing out that others had said there was a problem with supply and demand—that there was too much demand—and therefore that landlords had too much of a whip hand. I was merely pointing out that there were better ways of dealing with the supply-and-demand issue than through this Bill, so my point was very pertinent to the Bill. The hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) seems to be slower on the uptake than normal, so I shall repeat that point: there are better ways of dealing with the supply-and-demand issues than by passing the Bill, which makes my remarks very pertinent to whether we need to pass the Bill.
As I was trying to say before I was rudely and repeatedly interrupted, the private rented sector has been a topical issue for many years, and there have always been arguments for greater regulation of the industry. The historical context of assured shorthold tenancies and section 21 notices, which are the subject of the Bill, can be easily traced. The 1987 Conservative manifesto recognised that there was a problem with the shortage of rented properties available, and to help increase the supply of rented dwellings, it pledged to make renting easier for landlords. I will not read out the whole section of the manifesto, under the “Better Housing for All” heading, but the relevant bits read, under the sub-heading, “A Right to Rent”:
“Most problems in housing now arise in the rented sector. Controls, although well-meant, have dramatically reduced the private rented accommodation to a mere 8 per cent of the housing market. This restricts housing choice and hinders the economy. People looking for work cannot easily move to a different area to do so. Those who find work may not be able to find rented accommodation nearby. Those who would prefer to rent rather than buy are forced to become reluctant owner-occupiers or to swell the queue for council houses. Some may even become temporarily homeless. And it is not only these people and their families who suffer from the shortage of homes for rent. The economy as a whole is damaged when workers cannot move to fill jobs because there are no homes to rent in the neighbourhood.”
Many might say we face similar challenges today. It went on:
“The next Conservative Government, having already implemented the right to buy, will increase practical opportunities to rent. We must attract new private investment into rented housing… First, to encourage more investment by institutions, we will extend the system of assured tenancies. This will permit new lettings in which rents and the period of lease will be freely agreed between tenants and landlords. The tenant will have security of tenure and will renegotiate the rent at the end of the lease, with provision for arbitration if necessary. Second, to encourage new lettings by smaller landlords, we will develop the system of shorthold. The rents of landlords will be limited to a reasonable rate of return, and the tenant's security of tenure will be limited to the term of the lease, which would be not less than 6 months. This will bring back into use many of the 550,000 private dwellings which now stand empty because of controls, as well as making the provision of new rented housing a more attractive investment.”
That touches on the point made by the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn). The reason for the system used today was to bring into use lots of properties that were out of use, because unfortunately the system then was not conducive to encouraging people to rent out their properties.
The figure of 550,000—the number of private dwellings to be brought back into the rental market—is staggering and shows starkly the dangers of too much regulatory interference. The fewer properties on the market, the worse is the supply-and-demand issue, so if people think there is a problem with supply and demand now, I must point out that it can only get worse if we introduce too much regulation into the sector.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend is accurate in his recollection of the history. Would he like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the then Member for Bristol West who was the Minister responsible for housing—now the noble Lord Waldegrave. The Department of the Environment at the time, in which I was privileged to serve as a very junior Minister, carried this forward as a really popular piece of legislation.
Philip Davies
I am very grateful. I was not aware of the history that Bristol West has in respect of Ministers from this Department. I would happily praise Lord Waldegrave. I know that my hon. Friend must have been in that Department if it was doing something sensible; I am sure it was more down to him than to the Member for Bristol West. I will leave that to be determined.
The 1987 manifesto also said it would
“strengthen the law against harassment and unlawful eviction”.
All this was from a Thatcher Conservative manifesto.
The legislation relating to section 21 notices came about because, against this backdrop of the manifesto, the Housing Act 1988 was passed, as my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) will know. Section 21 deals with the landlord issuing a no-fault notice to terminate the contract. This is what today’s Bill is about. It is therefore crucial to understand the section through which this Bill is seeking to ride a coach and horses. The section in the original 1988 Act is titled “Recovery of possession on expiry or termination of assured shorthold tenancy” and it states:
“Without prejudice to any right of the landlord under an assured shorthold tenancy to recover possession of the dwelling-house let on the tenancy in accordance with Chapter I above, on or after the coming to an end of an assured shorthold tenancy which was a fixed term tenancy, a court shall make an order for possession of the dwelling-house if it is satisfied…that the assured shorthold tenancy has come to an end and no further assured tenancy…is for the time being in existence”
and
“the landlord or, in the case of joint landlords, at least one of them has given to the tenant not less than two months’ notice…stating that he requires possession of the dwelling-house.”
In essence, the tenants need to be given two months’ notice in order for the request to regain the property to be valid.
The section continues:
“A notice under paragraph (b)…above may be given before or on the day on which the tenancy comes to an end; and that subsection shall have effect notwithstanding that on the coming to an end of the fixed term tenancy a statutory periodic tenancy arises.”
If there is a six-month tenancy, say to 31 July, notice can be served any time up to that date. Strictly speaking, the original tenancy ended on 31 July and the periodic tenancy started thereafter. It goes on:
“Where a court makes an order for possession of a dwelling-house by virtue of subsection (1) above, any statutory periodic tenancy which has arisen on the coming to an end of the assured shorthold tenancy shall end”
on the day on which the order takes effect. That means that the periodic tenancy is wrapped up and no further notice is needed. That is basically the point.
Another point is that
“a court shall make an order for possession of the dwelling-house”
let on an “assured shorthold tenancy”, which is a “periodic tenancy” if the court is satisfied that at least one of the landlords in the case of joint landlords has given to the tenants a notice stating the last day of the tenancy not less than two months after the date, and the date specified is not earlier than the earliest date on which the tenancy could be brought to an end. So if a notice is not served in the contractual term, and a periodic tenancy has arisen, a further notice is required which must be for a minimum of two months.
The original section of the Act had four subsections and it has been amended in a few ways since its introduction—for example, any notice under section 21 must now be done in writing, which was not in the original Act. This change, other minor amendments, and five new clauses have been added by the Local Government Act 1989, the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008, the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003, as well as by various statutory instruments.
Today’s Bill seeks to curtail this section and place an additional restriction on landlords. Section 21 applies to an assured shorthold tenancy. On the Government website there is a section called “Tenancy agreements: a guide for landlords”, which explains what an assured shorthold tenancy is, saying:
“The most common form of tenancy is an AST. Most new tenancies are automatically this type. A tenancy can be an AST if all of the following apply: you’re a private landlord or housing association…the tenancy started on or after 15 January 1989…the property is your tenants’ main accommodation…you don’t live in the property”.
It continues:
“A tenancy can’t be an AST if: it began or was agreed before 15 January 1989…the rent is more than £100,000 a year…the rent is less than £250 a year (less than £1,000 in London)…it’s a business tenancy or tenancy of licensed premises…it’s a holiday let…the landlord is a local council”.
Now the Communities and Local Government Select Committee looked at the private rented sector for its first report of the Session 2013-14. pointing out that sector was growing.
“The private rented sector is growing. In 1999, 9.9% of English households rented privately. By 2011/12, the figure had risen to 17.4%, with the number of households renting privately overtaking the number in the social rented sector...In the course of our inquiry, witnesses suggested a number of reasons for this growth including: the deregulation of the private rented sector and changes to tenancies in the late 1980s generating increased investment;…the introduction of new lending instruments in the late 1990s;…constraints on the other two main tenures—social housing and owner occupation—forcing more people to rent privately…and economic, social and lifestyle factors leading to an increased demand for more flexible forms of housing tenure…Most likely, all these drivers have contributed in some way to the growth.”
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Obviously, the more supply there is in the market, the better it is for the tenants—the more choice they have, the more likely it is that prices will be lower than if there was less supply.
Jeremy Corbyn
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I have been listening carefully to the speech of the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), and he does not seem to me to be talking much about retaliatory evictions. He is talking more about the generality of the private rented sector. It is obviously in order to refer to that, but it is clearly not the central factor of the Bill. The Bill is quite specific—it deals with retaliatory evictions.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
We are going to hear quite a speech. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will be heading that way, but he is actually in order.
Philip Davies
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. If the hon. Gentleman would let me get on with it, we might get to a conclusion, instead of having him delaying proceedings all the time.
It is interesting to note in that Select Committee report the clear reference to the deregulation of the private rented sector and changes to tenancies in the late 1980s as being reasons for the increase in rented accommodation. That was exactly the point made in the 1987 Conservative manifesto, which I mentioned earlier. The exact figures are interesting, too. The number of private rentals nearly doubled from 1999 to 2012. In 1999 there were 2 million; in 2011-12 there were 3.8 million; whereas the social rented sector declined from 4 million to 3.8 million, but just below the number of the private rentals.
When it comes to understanding the procedure in relation to a section 21 notice for an assured shorthold tenancy, let me tell the hon. Member for Islington North that that is what the Bill is about. I do not know whether he has read the Bill, but that is what it is about. I am sorry to have surprised him by telling him that the Bill is about section 21 notices for an assured shorthold tenancy.
The Department for Communities and Local Government has guidance called, “Gaining possession of a privately rented property let on an assured shorthold tenancy”. It is dated 14 November 2012, but is the current online guidance on the DCLG’s webspace. It says:
“You cannot use Section 21 to gain possession of your property during the fixed term. You can serve a Section 21 notice on your tenant during that time, providing the date you state you require possession is not before the end of the fixed term. If your tenant paid a deposit, you cannot use Section 21 unless the deposit has been protected in accordance with the tenancy deposit schemes.”
This idea that landlords can go along willy-nilly using section 21 at any time a tenant decides to complain about the condition of their property is just for the birds. It is just not accurate. The guidance on the Department’s website is perfectly clear about that.
The tenancy deposit scheme is another regulatory burden on landlords, and it is relevant to the Bill because it is a crucial element of the qualifying criteria for a landlord to issue a section 21 notice. However, that is the only respect in which it is relevant, so I do not think that I need to dwell on it any further, which will please the hon. Member for Islington North.
The guidance on the Department’s website goes on to say:
“You must give at least 2 months notice in writing. If the fixed term has expired the notice will end on the last day of the rental period and you must explain that you are giving notice by virtue of Section 21 of the Housing Act 1988. You will need to give more than 2 months’ notice if the fixed term has expired and the gap between the dates that the rent falls due is more than 2 months (e.g, a quarterly rent).”
Serving the notice is only part of the story, however. Giving notice under section 21 is merely that; it does not constitute a guarantee that the tenants will actually leave. The Department gives a helpful explanation on its website, and I shall set out some quotations from it:
“What do I do if my tenant refuses to leave on the date specified in the notice?
You will need to apply to the courts for a ‘possession order’.”
“What do I do if my tenant refuses to leave by the date given in the court order?
You must apply to the courts for a warrant of possession and the court will arrange for a bailiff to evict the tenant. You will need to use the ‘Request for Warrant of possession of Land (N325)…form.”
“How can I speed up the process?
You can use the possession claim online service if you are seeking possession of the property together with any rent arrears. The service allows you to access court forms online”.
“Where possession is sought under Section 21, an accelerated procedure can be used which is a straightforward and inexpensive procedure for getting possession of your property without a court hearing.
In most cases using this procedure the court will make its decision on the papers, and can order possession to be given up within 14 days unless exceptional hardship would be caused, in which case the maximum time that can be allowed is 42 days.
You can only use this procedure if you have a written tenancy agreement and you have given the tenant the required notice in writing that you are seeking possession. You cannot use this procedure if you are also claiming rent arrears.”
The landlord therefore still has plenty of hoops to jump through, even after serving notice, unlike the tenant, who will have no problems at all if he or she wants simply to leave.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is already a big problem for landlords. Many landlords also worry about not being paid for weeks on end and, for example, being unable to have any benefits paid directly to them.
The issue with which we are dealing today is what is described as “retaliatory eviction”. The House of Commons Library says:
“Retaliatory eviction, also sometimes referred to as revenge eviction, is used to describe the situation where a private landlord serves a section 21 notice on an assured shorthold tenant (seeking to terminate the tenancy) in response to the tenant’s request for repairs, or where they have sought assistance from the local authority’s environmental health department.
Retaliatory eviction is said to be a by-product of the fact that private landlords can evict assured shorthold tenants without having to establish any ‘fault’ on the part of the tenant.”
The problem is that unless one knows the specifics of the case, or is in possession of an admission that that is what the landlord has done, it is difficult to know whether an eviction falls into that category. A landlord could, for example, coincidentally need the property back at the same time as the issuing of a complaint or a request for repairs.
I know of an example of a woman who went to Australia with her then boyfriend. They let their property in Clapham to go off on what was supposed to be a three-year secondment. Unfortunately, the woman’s boyfriend decided to end their relationship after just a few months. Her visa was dependent on him, so she had a very short time in which to leave Australia. She was homeless on her return to the United Kingdom, as the property had been let to cover the mortgage while they were out of the country. She had no choice but to give her tenant notice so that she could at least have somewhere to live and regain part of her life back in the UK.
Under the Bill if, by sheer coincidence, the tenant—who had been dealing with managing agents—had given notice of a problem, the woman would have had to wait a further six months. Given that she would be the one moving back into the property, she would hardly have not wanted to do whatever work was needed, because such work would have been to her benefit. The delay would have made an already upsetting situation even more distressing and stressful. Such a situation could well be just one of the Bill’s unintended consequences.
Similarly, if someone wanted to move back into a property to be near an ill or dying relative and to help with that relative’s care, in the event of the same coincidental timing of a notice or complaint, that person could be prevented from regaining his or her property, with the obvious emotional problems that would naturally arise in such distressing circumstances. Moreover, the tenant’s complaint might not be genuine. In the cases cited by the proponents of action, such as the Bill’s proposer, complaints are always genuine rather than bogus or spurious, although such complaints obviously occur from time to time.
Landlords already have obligations in relation to repairs and maintenance under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, so they have a legal duty. We are talking about tenants who complain about a landlord who is not carrying out his legal duty. Resorting to evicting tenants would not remove the legal duty in section 11 of that Act, which states:
“In a lease to which this section applies…there is implied a covenant by the lessor…to keep in repair the structure and exterior of the dwelling-house (including drains, gutters and external pipes)…to keep in repair and proper working order the installations in the dwelling-house for the supply of water, gas and electricity and for sanitation (including basins, sinks, baths and sanitary conveniences, but not other fixtures, fittings and appliances for making use of the supply of water, gas or electricity), and…to keep in repair and proper working order the installations in the dwelling-house for space heating and heating water.”
The Communities and Local Government Committee considered retaliatory evictions as part of its 2013-14 report on the private rented sector.
Stephen Pound
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I would never dare for a moment to suggest a course of action that you should take from the Chair, but surely, Sir, you would agree that this is utterly, totally and completely irrelevant. We will be on to episodes of “Rising Damp” next. Is it in order for the hon. Gentleman to seek to read out a list of necessities including “sanitary conveniences” in his pathetic attempt to talk out a good and decent Bill?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
That is not a point of order, but we have heard the hon. Gentleman’s view and his opinion. My opinion is that the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) is in order. However, I agree with the hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) on one point: we do not want to be given too many more examples.
Philip Davies
I am grateful to you, Mr Deputy Speaker.
I am surprised that the hon. Member for Ealing North has led with his chin by drawing attention to the fact that he has absolutely no idea what the Bill is about. The Bill is about retaliatory evictions. That is the whole purpose of it, and that is what the campaign that resulted in the Bill was about. The moment I mentioned the Select Committee’s report that considered retaliatory evictions, the hon. Gentleman stood up to say that that was irrelevant to the Bill. Either the hon. Gentleman is wasting time himself, or he has not the first idea what he is talking about. I have no idea why he is sitting on the Opposition Front Bench masquerading as some sort of expert on the subject.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is right. I know that this is very inconvenient, but the whole point of Select Committees is to look at and scrutinise issues in detail and to take evidence, with the Committee then making recommendations on the basis of its expertise. It is a sad day in this House when Members seem not to want to know what that Select Committee, under its Labour Chairman, said about the issue we are debating. Free speech is a long way away from the Labour party. The detailed Select Committee report is a hefty 79 pages long.
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. I am not sure that I was referring to a Select Committee report, but we are dealing with a Bill. The two must presumably link, but I am not sure how, as I do not have the Select Committee report before me. I know that the hon. Gentleman wants to discuss the Bill and I presume that that is what we are going to do.
Philip Davies
Very much so. The specific point about retaliatory eviction in the Select Committee’s report is relatively short but insightful:
“A number of witnesses raised concerns about ‘retaliatory eviction’, whereby landlords would serve notice on a tenant if they complained or asked for repairs to be carried out. Bradford Metropolitan District Council”—
my local authority—
“stated that one of the consequences of the relative lack of security of tenure in the PRS is the incidence of retaliatory evictions. We have concerns that when some landlords become aware that their tenants have contacted the local authority for assistance with the poor standard of their accommodation, that they then serve notice on their tenants, who are then required to move out.”
Retaliatory eviction was said to be a by-product of the fact that private landlords can evict assured shorthold tenants without having to establish any fault on the part of the tenants.
I will come on to what happens in other countries but, sticking to the conclusion that is relevant to the Bill, the Select Committee said:
“We are not convinced, however, that a legislative approach is the best or even an effective solution. Changing the law to limit the issuing of section 21 notices might be counter-productive and stunt the market. Rather, if we move towards a culture where longer tenancies become the norm, tenants will have greater security and also more confidence to ask for improvements and maintenance and, when necessary, to complain about their landlord. Moreover, if local authorities take a more proactive approach to enforcement, they will be able to address problems as they occur rather than waiting for tenants to report them.”
The Committee cited the word “perception”, as opposed to the reality, and rejected the need for legislation, going as far as to say that that could be “counter-productive”. I could not have put it better myself, and I praise all the Committee members who listened to the evidence and reached that sensible conclusion.
The issue of retaliatory evictions is not new—in fact, it has been raised time and again—yet no Government, whether Conservative or Labour, have felt the need to take action. The issue was the subject of an amendment in the name of Lord Dubs that was moved by Lord Williams of Elvel in 1996. It is worth considering the reasons behind the amendment. Lord Williams said:
“This amendment deals with the difficult problem of retaliatory eviction. The effect of the amendment is to extend the notice period in such cases…Retaliatory evictions, apart from being very distressing to those who are evicted as a result of something they may have done inadvertently, can seriously hamper a local authority's attempts to tackle poor housing conditions.”
Exactly the same issue was therefore being discussed in 1996. The interesting bit is the response of Earl Ferrers, the then Minister:
“I have difficulty with what the noble Lord is proposing. It could prevent a landlord from regaining possession of his property for more than a year after the end of the initial six-month period or after the end of a pre-agreed fixed term”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 10 July 1996; Vol. 574, c. 311-313.]
Of course, those problems remain. The then Minister’s argument—that such a measure could create unnecessary problems for genuine landlords—is as relevant today as it was when that amendment was moved and the then Conservative Government rejected it.
The issue was also raised when Labour was in office. Lord Williams of Elvel—a very persistent Member—had another go in 2008. The then Labour Minister, Baroness Andrews, responded by saying:
“We have to understand the scale of the problem. It is not at all clear how many people are affected. We also need to avoid unintended consequences. We need a thriving private rented sector and we need to keep good landlords in the market.”
She was right.
I shall not go into the other notable comments that were made during that debate, but Earl Cathcart and Baroness Gardner of Parkes also made good points. Baroness Andrews summed things up by saying that it was
“in everyone’s interests to get the balance right”. —[Official Report, House of Lords, 2 April 2008; Vol. 700, c. 1039-1041.]
That was what the Labour Government thought they had done. I agree with them, as they did get the balance right between the rights of the landlord and those of the tenant.
I know that the hon. Member for Brent Central has the support of many of her Liberal Democrat colleagues, but I was interested to read the position of the former Communities and Local Government Minister, the right hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Sir Andrew Stunell), during the passage of the Bill that became the Localism Act 2011. He said:
“section 21 is one of the key characteristics of assured shorthold tenancies to which the tenancy deposit scheme relates. It allows a landlord to evict a tenant, having given reasonable notice, on a non-discretionary basis and without having to give a reason. The ability to gain possession of their property is key to a landlord’s confidence in letting out that property in the first place, and in the current economic climate, we would not want to undermine that confidence.”––[Official Report, Localism Public Bill Committee, 10 March 2011; c. 952.]
Once again we have the Liberal Democrats all over the place on an issue. They tell landlords one thing on the one hand, but tell tenants something completely different on the other. However, I think that what the right hon. Member for Hazel Grove said was very sensible.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. An unintended consequence of the Bill would be that there would be fewer properties on the market for people to rent, and I am not sure how that that would help anybody.
The Communities and Local Government Committee report also dealt with the fear of retaliatory eviction in relation to energy efficiency requests. It said that Friends of the Earth and the Association for the Conservation of Energy were concerned that tenants would be unlikely to request energy efficiency measures from landlords for fear of eviction. This is mentioned in the Bill, although that was not a recommendation of the Committee. Actually, the Committee’s recommendation was very landlord-friendly, while recognising that this would also help tenants, because it asked the Government to
“convene a working party from all parts of the industry, to examine proposals to speed up the process of evicting during a tenancy tenants who do not pay rent promptly or fail to meet other contractual obligations. The ability to secure eviction more quickly for non payment of rent will encourage landlords to make properties available on longer tenancies. The Government should also set out a quicker means for landlords to gain possession if they can provide proof that they intend to sell the property.”
The Committee was in effect urging the Government to take the exact opposite view from that proposed in the Bill. It says that they should make it easier for landlords to evict tenants more quickly, which would mean there would be more properties available and landlords would have much more confidence in offering longer tenancies, with the security that that provides.
The Committee’s report did not agree at all with what is proposed in the Bill, yet apparently all parties are supporting it today. Before we start running around doing something about a problem, we need to be sure it is so concerning that it is impossible to ignore.
The English housing survey is a good place from which to get important statistics for this debate. According to the 2012-13 survey, 84% of private renters said they were very or fairly satisfied with their accommodation, with 10% being either slightly or very dissatisfied. Three fifths—61%—of private renters reported that they anticipated owning their own property in the longer term, with about a quarter reporting that they expected still to be renting from a private landlord in the longer term. In the private rented sector, a fifth of households were of other nationalities—not British or Irish—in comparison with only 3% of owner-occupiers, and 7% of social renters. The private rented sector had the largest proportion of full-time students and only 13% of private renter households earned less than £200 a week. In 2008-09, 12% of private renters were couples with dependent children, but by 2012-13, that figure had increased to 20%, compared with 39% of people with a mortgage. Private renters had been living in their current home for an average of 3.8 years, so most private renters stay in a property much longer than many might imagine.
It is important to paint that illuminating picture of the types of people who rent. It is clear that there are reasons why they would choose to rent rather than buy, not least of which is that people of different nationalities might be working over here temporarily. Students might live away from home for a fixed period of time but then want to return. It is also important to note that the vast majority of private renters are very happy with their accommodation. I certainly fall into that category as somebody who rents a property in London and in Shipley, and I hope that my tenants do too. That is not the picture that some people would like to paint in justifying the Bill today.
The housing survey also assists with the numbers of people leaving their properties, which is crucial in understanding the position of eviction in the market. The survey states that four fifths of private renters who moved in the past three years said that their tenancy had ended because they had wanted to move; only 7% said that it was because they had been asked to leave by their landlord or agent—and that covers every possible circumstance before we even move on to retaliatory eviction. The other reasons were that the renter wanted to move, that there was a mutual agreement or that the accommodation was tied to a job that had ended.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is absolutely right and that certainly makes up a large part of the market.
A helpful breakdown in the English housing survey also shows why over the past three years tenants were asked to leave. That is very illuminating as regards today’s debate, because we are being led to believe that people left, right and centre are being asked to leave in some sort of retaliatory eviction, which simply is not the case. Out of 184,000, 103,000 had been asked to leave because the landlord wanted to sell the property or use it themselves, 18% had been asked to leave because they had not paid the rent and 63,000 had left for other unspecified reasons, which is 35%. In 57% of all cases people were asked to leave simply because the landlord wanted to sell up or use the property themselves.
It is not very helpful just to say that there are “other reasons”, so I asked the statisticians behind the survey for a breakdown so that we could be a bit more specific about what they were and how many there were in each category. I suspect that the Government have not done that and that the hon. Member for Brent Central has not done so either. The statisticians helpfully said that the sample sizes for the response options grouped together as other reasons are too small to break down any further but include difficulties with the payment of housing benefit and local housing allowance, the landlord’s being dissatisfied with how accommodation was being looked after, the landlord’s receiving complaints from neighbours and, crucially, the tenant’s having complained to the council, agent or landlord about problems with the property. So, that was the fourth reason down of the other reasons that are individually too small a sample to be broken down and have their own category. That lays bare the extent of the problem that the Bill is trying to deal with today.
The Government claim that they have been persuaded of the case and that because of a YouGov survey they have overturned everything they ever believed in. It seemed from what the Minister said earlier that that is the basis on which the Government’s position has changed. He did not say that it was a YouGov survey commissioned by Shelter, so I will add that bit for him. The day that a Government support a Bill on the basis of an opinion poll commissioned by a campaign group is a sad day, and the Minister did not even have the nerve to admit that that was what happened. It was a survey conducted by a pressure group, and that is a pretty shoddy reason. He should look at the evidence.
Stephen Williams
I cited the YouGov research, and the extrapolation that could be made from it, as further evidence of the need for the Bill. The compelling need for the Bill has also been illustrated by many other hon. Members who have spoken in the debate and reiterated the real-life experiences of their constituents. They have shown why there is a need for the Bill.
Philip Davies
If the Minister would like to intervene on me again and tell me his view of the English housing survey and how much weight should be put on the figures, I would be interested to hear that. The survey has, in just one set of tables, completely undermined the case for the Bill.
Given that the smallest figure that had a category—non-payment of rent—was 18,000, we can deduce that the number of households with tenants who were asked to leave because they had complained about problems with the property has to be substantially less, because it was the fourth category down in the “other” section. The figure must therefore be considerably less than 18,000. That figure also relates to people who have been asked to move from a household in the past three years, so this represents a three-year figure, not just a one-year figure. We know that the figure is very small, but, whatever it is, it will include tenants who have complained but who did not have a genuine complaint, because the complaints in the survey were never verified.
In fewer than 18,000 households were tenants renting in the private sector asked to leave because of a complaint made about problems with their property. Even if the figure were 18,000, that would amount to only 0.7% of all households where the tenant left their rented property in the past three years. That means that fewer than 6,000 households a year were affected. We do not know the exact number, because the figures are too small to be helpful, as the statistician behind the English housing survey confirmed.
Another way of looking at this is provided by the Association of Residential Letting Agents, which has said of retaliatory eviction:
“A recent poll undertaken by possession specialists, Landlord Action, suggests it could be the reason behind around 2% of landlord possession claims.”
It is also important to consider that, according to the English housing survey for 2010-11, only 9% of tenancies ended at the request of the landlord. Based on those two pieces of research, we can conclude that the figure we are talking about is 2% of that 9%. So, according to the best evidence we have, retaliatory evictions might occur in only about 0.18% of tenancies, yet we are told that it is essential that we pass this Bill today. Given that the English housing survey suggests that there are currently almost 4 million tenancies in the UK, that 0.18% would equate to approximately 7,120 tenancies ending in retaliatory eviction.
Richard Lambert, chief executive officer at the National Landlords Association, has said of retaliatory eviction that
“it should not be confused with using the no fault possession procedure to end a tenancy, which in the vast majority of cases is the final resort, not a response to a request for repairs or because landlords are out for revenge. We don’t talk about any other service provider seeking revenge from their customers and there is no reason to suspect landlords are any different. Sarah Teather’s private member’s Bill is aimed at tackling a perception of the ‘worst case scenario’, which is not the experience of the majority of renters who rely on private housing. There is a lack of hard evidence to support a need for the changes proposed”.
How well do the official figures that I have given to the House tally with the claims being made by those in favour of the Bill? Not very well—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
Order. The hon. Gentleman has been talking for a very long time on the same point. He has made the point very eloquently, but he is in danger of repeating the same point continuously by drawing on different comments from elsewhere. He is now repeating himself and—dare I say it?—repetition can sometimes get a bit tedious. This comes under Standing Orders, so I hope, given that there are others waiting to speak, that he will acknowledge that he has made his point and conclude his remarks.
Philip Davies
I shall stay in order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I recall, back in 2005, when I was first here, the then Member for Hendon spoke for three hours and 17 minutes on a—
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. Whether a contribution in the House is in order or not is measured not by time but by whether it continuously repeats a point or argument. However good the hon. Gentleman’s memory might be, the fact is that I am in the Chair now and I have given him my ruling. It is the content of a speech, not its length, that is the measure. He has made his point, so perhaps he will move on to another one. I do not want him to keep going over the same ground.
Philip Davies
I am absolutely not going to go over the same ground, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am going to compare the official figures with those given by the campaigning organisations that have asked for this Bill to be introduced, because they simply do not tally.
Shelter, which has been making a lot of noise on this subject, says on its website that last year 200,000 renters faced eviction just for speaking out about bad conditions. The official figures are nowhere near 200,000; Shelter has just picked a figure out of thin air and decided to run a campaign on the back of it. In the briefing note for this Bill, Shelter says that more than 200,000 renters have been evicted or served notice in the past year because they complained to their local council or their landlord about a problem in their home—that is simply not true. I am confused: is Shelter saying that 200,000 renters faced eviction, that 200,000 were either evicted or served a notice, or that 200,000 were evicted and many more live in fear of eviction? I do not know which it is, but I am certainly not sure that that is true. The Liberal Democrat Lord Stoneham has said that every year 300,000 tenants are evicted after making a complaint to their landlord about the state of their home, so we have fantasy figures inflation about this. I am not sure where the figures come from, and I would be very interested to know, but that is 150% of Shelter’s worst-case scenario of 200,000 people being evicted.
Mr Chope
The Minister has fallen back on saying that he is relying on anecdotal evidence to justify this Bill. Bearing in mind the impact it will have on the whole of the private rental market, is it not right to look at the exact scale and try to find some evidence to justify the case for this Bill?
Philip Davies
Absolutely. The official figures are there; but the Government have just decided, presumably because an election is coming and the Minister thinks he might get a few cheap votes out of it, to ignore the evidence Paul Shamplina of Landlord Action has said that Shelter is
“engaging in a lot of guesswork”
on the figures. He said that the Government statistics show that last year there were 170,000 possession claims issued—the Minister might want to confirm that these are his Department’s figures—of which 113,000 were for the social sector. So that just leaves 57,000 in the private rented sector, 23,000 of which were through a hearing route—section 8—and 34,000 of which were through the accelerated possession routes. He says that
“most of the time tenants may not know the reason”
why a section 21 notice is issued, because it is the landlord’s prerogative. Does the Minister want to confirm that that is the case and so those figures from Shelter are just completely wrong?
Landlord Action also carried out a survey of landlords who had served section 21 notices, finding that 28% of landlords said they had served a notice because their tenant was in rent arrears, with 2% advising that their tenants had asked for repairs to be carried out so they served a section 21 notice. It could be argued that those were retaliatory evictions, but the precise details are not known. The Competition and Markets Authority also notes that the database it analysed in preparing its review of lettings did not identify retaliatory eviction as a problem of any significance at all.
Given all that, we could be forgiven for being completely confused and wondering what the reality of the situation is. Helpfully, however, the Government have been answering parliamentary questions on this subject. My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) asked how many section 21 notices were served in each of the past 12 months and in each of the past five years. The Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis) said:
“The Government does not collect this information.”
But he went on to say that the serving of such notices was
“like any other termination of a contract…a private matter between the landlord and tenant.”
That raises the question of why the Government now do not seem to think it is a private matter between the landlord and the tenant, and seem to have figures that they did not have when the question was asked.
My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport also asked what records the Department keeps and what criteria they use to define retaliatory eviction. Again, the Minister replied that none of that information is collected centrally. Having looked at that some more, it seems that my assessment of the situation chimes with what previous Housing Ministers have said. My right hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps), now Conservative party chairman, when he was Housing Minister, referred to the English housing survey and gave the figures I have used today. He was using those figures as the official Government figures. If they are the official Government figures, why does the Minister not accept them? Why are the Government now trying to pretend that a YouGov poll is more important and worthwhile than the official figures that his predecessors used when discussing the matter?
The hon. Member for Eastleigh (Mike Thornton) asked earlier this year, on 28 April—
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. Okay, Mr Davies, under Standing Order No. 42, a Member may be called to order for
“tedious repetition either of his own arguments or of the arguments used by other Members”.
That is now what is happening with regard to the reference to evictions in the Bill. The Member has been speaking for nearly an hour. I am directing the Member to make his closing remarks now. Otherwise, I will require him to take his seat so that we can hear from the other Members who wish to participate in the debate. Is that clear?
Philip Davies
Well, your position is clear, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was not sure that the Chair had positions, but your position is clear.
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order! Sit down, Mr Davies. That is an outrageous challenge to the Chair. Your speech is now finished. I call Mr Christopher Chope.
Mr Chope
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Having heard the Minister say that a local authority “ought to” be able to do this in two months, I could not agree with him more, but my concern is what happens when a local authority does not do what Members think it ought to do. We have already heard many examples of areas in which local authorities are already falling down on their statutory duties. Nothing in the Bill sets out a timescale within which a local authority has to act in response to the requirements set out in the Bill. If the Minister thinks that two months is reasonable for the whole process, we should be able to incorporate that time scale in the Bill, perhaps through amendments in Committee. Perhaps such amendments will be tabled by the Government.
In each paragraph in clause 1(4), we should specify that the relevant local housing authority must decide within, say, two weeks. There are four parts to the process, so if the Minister thinks that two months is a reasonable time for those four activities, two weeks for each would equal eight weeks. Each of those decisions by the relevant housing authority would therefore have to be taken within the two-week period or be deemed to be a negative decision. That would be a necessary protection for the landlord and, if the tenant has a genuine concern, it would be an opportunity for him to be assured that if something is wrong in the house that he is occupying it can be put right in a reasonably short time. I would be happy to give way to the Minister if he thinks that my interpretation of the need for such an assurance to be included in the Bill is reasonable and the Government would be willing to take it on board to meet the concerns that I have expressed. I note that the Minister has not responded.
The hon. Member for Brent Central said—and I agree with her—that a heck of a lot of people are tenants in properties whose landlord is falling down on the responsibility to keep the property in good repair. Those responsibilities can already be enforced by the existing law, especially the provisions of the Housing Act 2004. That Act deals with the enforcement of housing standards. It defines two categories of hazard. In section 5, the local authority is under a statutory duty with regard to category 1 hazards. Under the title “Category 1 hazards: general duty to take enforcement action”, the Act states:
“If a local housing authority consider that a category 1 hazard exists on any residential premises, they must take the appropriate enforcement action in relation to the hazard.”
For category 2 hazards, local authorities have the power to take enforcement action. We know that in many cases local authorities are not exercising those powers. That is par for the course and there is nothing that we can do about it.
We know also that in many areas local housing authorities are not exercising their statutory duties, which means that they are letting down the tenants whom they purport to want to assist. Because local authorities are failing to exercise their responsibilities, they are permitting—through their lack of intervention—a larger number of properties to be in disrepair than should be the case. That is unacceptable.
Philip Davies
Given that many of the hon. Members who support the Bill today claim that local authorities are short of resources, does my hon. Friend have any idea as to what extra resources local authorities will need to meet the Bill’s requirements and expectations, and whether they have had any discussions on the matter?
Mr Chope
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that very pertinent question. I think it comes back to the lack of a regulatory impact assessment. The Bill has the potential to put more responsibility on to local authorities, but we know they are already not exercising those responsibilities. The Minister said that they had been given specific grants by the Government in the past year. I think he talked about £6.7 million, if my memory serves me. Despite that, the amount of activity he described by local authorities dealing with problems relating to housing in a bad state of repair was very small indeed in comparison with the vast number of properties—some 4 million—that are currently let by landlords to tenants.
That deals with one of the issues relating to the further exemptions under section 1 set out in clause 2. It is still far from clear that putting the burden on the landlord to show that a complaint is totally without merit is a solution to the problem that the Minister and the promoter of the Bill identified, which is how to deal with tenants who are mischievous, who want to prolong their tenancies, who cause trouble for the landlord or who effectively are in what might be described as the tenants’ awkward squad. If this is to be any use, the burden should be the other way around. The burden should be on the tenant to show that the complaint has merit—the burden of proof should be reversed.
Clause 2(1) states:
“Subsections (1) to (3) of section 1 do not apply where the condition of the dwelling-house or common parts that gave rise to the service of the relevant notice, or consideration of whether to serve a…notice, is due to a breach by the tenant of—
(a) the duty to use the dwelling-house in a tenant-like manner, or
(b) an express term of the tenancy to the same effect.”
That will be subject to litigation. Whether a tenant has failed in a duty to use the dwelling-house in a tenant-like manner is ultimately something that has to be justiciable by the courts, even where it is alleged that there is a breach of an express term of the tenancy.
Why would tenants want to play the game of engaging in litigation? If they are impecunious, they know they can engage in retaliatory action against their landlords by using the courts against them. They could turn the powers in the Bill, which are designed to try to protect tenants, upside down and use them as a weapon against landlords. That is the concern being expressed by landlords’ associations. It is a pity that in listing the bodies the Minister has consulted, he did not mention the Residential Landlords Association, which represents many independent private landlords who are responsible and want to comply with the law, but who are extremely concerned about the consequences of the Bill were it to get on the statute book.
If we start raising questions of whether a tenant has breached an express term of a tenancy or failed to use the dwelling house in a tenant-like manner, we effectively return to the litigiousness of the landlord-tenant law that preceded the assured tenancy regime and section 21 notices, the whole purpose of which was to avoid the litigation and doubts associated with the termination of an assured shorthold tenancy after it had run its six-month course or at some subsequent time. The Bill would resurrect, almost covertly, those old litigious opportunities.
Before I entered the House, I was a practising barrister, and I spent many an enjoyable occasion before judges in the county courts—I will not list those I had the pleasure of practising in—representing tenants and landlords. I was familiar with how the complicated law, as it was prior to 1988, was used by the unscrupulous to prolong the agony, to themselves, often, and the landlord, and at great expense—I am talking about fees as well as the cost to the Courts Service and legal system. The purpose of section 21 notices, which would be undermined by the Bill, was to curtail that activity and the adversarial approach to dealing with tenants’ problems.
The Minister and promoter of the Bill say that clause 2, introducing further exemptions to the application of clause 1, balances out the rights of a tenant as against the landlord, but I do not think that is so. That point is reinforced by clause 2(3), which would provide for a further exemption where the dwelling is
“genuinely on the market for sale”.
Who will assess whether it is “genuinely” on the market? The explanatory notes mention family members, and clause 2(4) spells out specific cases where the landlord would not be regarded as being engaged in a genuine sale—
Mr Chope
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Before we had the interruption, I was expressing some concern about the reference:
“Subsections (1) to (3) of section 1 do not apply where the dwelling-house is genuinely on the market for sale.”
My concern is about the use of the word “genuinely”. Clause 2(4) states that a dwelling house is deemed not to be genuinely on the market for sale if the landlord intends to sell the landlord’s interest to a person associated with the landlord. If somebody wished to sell their house to their child, a divorced wife, a cousin or somebody like that, they would not be allowed to in these circumstances as it would not deliver an exemption from subsections (1) to (3) of clause 1.
Philip Davies
The Bill states that the landlord cannot sell to a person associated with the landlord. Given his legal background, can my hon. Friend give us any guidance on what “associated” means? Does that mean that it could not be sold to anybody whom the landlord knows in any way whatever?
Mr Chope
The answer can be found in clause 2(5):
“For the purposes of subsection (4), references to a person who is associated with another person are to be read in accordance with section 178 of the Housing Act 1996.”
I do not have section 178 of the 1996 Act immediately to hand, but although we might not agree with it, that is probably a proper and adequate definition in this Bill.
A second category of people to whom one would not be able to sell a property in order for it to be deemed to be genuinely on the market for sale would be those associated with the business partner of the landlord or a business partner of a person associated with the landlord. Again, that goes far too wide, and the landlord could well be in a situation such that he has to sell his house to pay off his debts to a business associate, for example. He might be a minority shareholder who can no longer sustain his position. All sorts of issues could arise. If we are saying that a dwelling house has to be genuinely on the market, we should not then go further and prohibit its sale to a relative, friend or business partner, or to an associate of a business partner.
People looking at the Bill will think that it is rather slanted against the landlord, yet it is being presented as neutral as between landlord and tenant. Another reason that I think it is slanted against the landlord is that the Residential Landlords Association, which represents the responsible landlords, is against the Bill. The Minister did not refer to the association when he was talking about those whom he had consulted in preparing his view of the Bill.
Clause 2(7) states that subsections (1) to (3) of clause 1 will not apply if the landlord is
“a private registered provider of social housing.”
There is no explanation for that provision, and in my experience some of the worst problems relating to premises in a state of disrepair are found in properties that are owned and let by private registered providers of social housing. Why should that category of person be exempt from the provisions of the Bill? Could this be based on anything other than an ill-conceived prejudice against independent private landlords?
When I first looked at clause 2(8), I thought it might meet one of the concerns that I expressed earlier about a landlord whose mortgage had been granted before the beginning of the tenancy. However, my reading of the subsection is that all three conditions set out in paragraphs (a), (b) and (c) will have to be satisfied, rather than just one of them. If the Bill goes into Committee, or if it comes back to the House to be reworked on an iterative basis, I hope that we can insert the word “or” after paragraphs (a) and (b), in place of the word “and”. This is another weakness of the Bill.
There are also weaknesses in the way the Bill seeks to change the notice process. I listened carefully to the hon. Member for Brent Central’s justification for changing the process, but I was not convinced by what she said. Similarly, the Minister justified clause 4 by saying that it would be perfectly reasonable to introduce new time limits, but, again, I was not convinced.
We are running out of time, so I shall turn quickly to clause 5. This is potentially one of the most dangerous in the Bill. The Bill gives the Government the power to bring forward regulations. The Bill itself is bad enough in undermining the whole shorthold tenancy regime, but the provisions of clause 5 would enable the Government to introduce regulations covering a whole host of other things that could be used as a reason for not allowing a landlord to recover possession of his own premises. Under the clause, that could occur if a landlord were in breach of requirements relating to
“the condition of dwelling-houses or their common parts”,
or to
“the energy performance of dwelling-houses”.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley said so ably, this is about privity of contract. People wishing to enter into an agreement can ask themselves whether they wish to take on the tenancy of a particular property. If the property has not got a good energy performance rating and the person is suffering hard times, the better choice is not to take a tenancy on that property but to look for a newly built property with proper central heating. We must not treat the people who enter into these contracts as imbeciles—