Tenant Fees Bill

Debate between Baroness Gardner of Parkes and Earl of Lytton

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 20th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)]

My Lords, I have moved this amendment simply because it is essential for people to know what they can be charged and what they cannot. The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, commented at the end of his speech on just that fact: that people need to know. If something was in the guidance that would indeed be very valuable, but at the present time people have no idea what they will be charged.

A lot of people have no idea that they have to prove they have a right to be in this country. I am sure most of us remember the embarrassing start of this whole problem, when a very impressive member of the Government at the time found that she had not checked on someone she employed. That is where all this started. As I understand the situation, there is now a fixed amount that people would be asked to pay for such an official designation of their nationality and the rights they have here. People are often totally unaware of this.

I understand that overcharging should not take place—I am not for a minute suggesting that—but people will need to know that, to rent a property, they have to prove that they are an ordinary person entitled to live here and not limited in what tenancy they can undertake. That is the purpose of this amendment. I claim no expertise in the wording of it, as the Public Bill Office very kindly helped me. I would be interested if people have comments on that. The principle behind it is to enable people to know what is and is not legitimate. Whether it is the agent, the prospective tenant or anyone else who provides that necessary information, it costs. You do not get it for nothing; that is the problem. I feel that the Bill is rather restrictive at the moment. I beg to move.

[The Earl of Lytton]

My Lords, the noble Baroness has made a valid point. I recall some years ago having to check the identity of an applicant for a business tenancy, who produced a passport from a Commonwealth country which was in date but did not contain the crucial words in the out-of-date one, also presented, which described the bearer as having the right to remain in the United Kingdom. I have always felt very nervous about trying to sift through this, because of the penalties that can be visited on one professionally—in this case, it would have been on a client landlord—in connection with letting. Getting these things right and carrying out identity and immigration status checks cannot be left to the tea boy. They need to be done by somebody who knows what they are doing and can take responsibility.

This takes us back to the question of where the two-way street between landlord and prospective tenant should lie and whether it is right that the landlord provides a property that he has warranted as clean and tidy, fit for purpose, not unsafe and so on, and the tenant is responsible for the cost of verifying their bona fides, as the noble Baroness says in her amendment. It seems that that is fairly unarguable, particularly in London where there are people of so many different nationalities. A further issue that needs to be addressed, assuming that eventually this country will leave the European Union, is European citizens’ right to remain here. The noble Baroness raises a valuable point, and I look forward to hearing what the Minister says.