Public Health (Coronavirus) (Protection from Eviction) (England) Regulations 2021

Baroness Grender Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Grender (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I too welcome the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, to his new role. We welcome the extension to 21 February but, for well-being, security and public health arguments, we believe that extensions of these measures should be linked to extensions of lockdowns. We regret that, unlike the first lockdown, eviction notices can still be served under these rules.

Given the UK and South African variants, the last thing we want is more families homeless, and the greatest cause of homelessness is the end of a private tenancy. I urge the Minister to agree to speak with and understand the plight of families who have had to find a new home to rent during the lockdown. I am sure that Citizens Advice would be willing to arrange this if he is amenable.

The Minister has been asked to deliver a highly significant change from the previous version of this statutory instrument—a change which suggests that there is a minimal understanding of what is happening to private renters. As the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, has already said—this bears repetition—the Secretary of State promised on 18 March that

“no renter who has lost income due to coronavirus will be forced out of their home”.

This change in the statutory instrument breaks that promise, by changing eviction guidance from a nine-month threshold to now ensuring that renters can be evicted with more than six months of arrears, including the period of this pandemic.

Last week in Oral Questions, I asked for the data behind this extraordinary decision. It was puzzling to me that the Minister kept resorting to the latest Citizens Advice report, New Year, Same Arrears, and using that as the rationale behind this change. Citizens Advice had revealed that tenants were £360 million behind in rent. But if they are behind in rent, surely they need support, not a change to include arrears during the period of the pandemic.

Sadly, this change is only too transparent. It suggests that, when it comes to tenants, the Government’s assumption is that they are in some way irresponsible—but most evidence suggests that before this pandemic, well over 90% of tenants were not in arrears. Should not the assumption be that these are responsible people, the vast majority of whom until this moment paid rent in full on time, who are now often in the worst- case scenarios? Indeed, according to the Resolution Foundation, twice as many private renters have reported job losses as homeowners. The Government’s own Household Resilience Survey: Wave 1 found that private renters were by far the hardest hit by the pandemic.

When the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, pushes his amendment to the Motion to test the opinion of the House, we will fully support him. I thank the noble Lord for his words of support. We feel that one vote is enough on this, and I will not push my amendment to a vote today.

When the Minister responds, I ask him to tell us what risk assessment has been conducted regarding the likelihood of families losing their home as a result of this substantive change.

The amendment to the Motion I have tabled explains the context in which so many private renters entered this pandemic and the devastating impact it has had on them. The Minister has already referred to the levels of support given. But, as my own amendment to the Motion makes clear, this support is given without an understanding of the context for most private renters at the start of this pandemic.

Renters had an average of £500 in savings at the start, and 60% had no savings at all. The average short- fall in support each month under the local housing allowance scheme, because it is only the bottom 30% of rents, is about £100—you do the maths. The benefit cap has also reduced allowances. So any savings—if renters did have them—are already gone, and many started with no savings at all.

Citizens Advice found that most tenants have accrued arrears of less than £600, but the people they help will take, on average, seven years to pay that back. The cost to the public purse right now to help those tenants through a support package of targeted loans and grants—a one-off financial boost that would pull them out of debt, so that they in turn can pay their landlord and stay in their home—would be less than the projected £360 million debt.

The final part of my amendment to the Motion refers to the need for just such a package of support to keep people in their home, proposed by the National Residential Landlords Association, Generation Rent, Citizens Advice and others. It is really important to note that, when we are talking about this balance issue with landlords, the NRLA is very clear that the real need is to tackle the rent debt crisis.

Let us put that £360 million debt in context. It is far less than the highly questionable £1 billion spent on lateral flow tests, devised by US firm Innova but made in China, and a tiny fraction of the staggering £15 billion spent in four months on test and trace, much of it on lateral flow tests. Let us think just for a second about the hurdles private sector tenants have to go through right now for support, and then compare it with the fact that only 1% of this massive test and trace expenditure has gone through any competitive tender, according to the National Audit Office. How different it is for renters, choosing between food, heat and rent.

For public heath safety, for security of a family home, and for mental health reasons alone, we should keep renters in their home. These measures fall far short of those aims.

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Tabled by

[Baroness Grender]

As an amendment to the motion in the name of Lord Wolfson of Tredegar, at end to insert “but that this House regrets that the Regulations do not link protection from evictions automatically to the extension of restrictions in place to address the COVID-19 pandemic and so do not provide long-term security to tenants; further regrets that the Regulations do not take into account factors such as (1) the shortfall between support from Her Majesty’s Government and median rents, (2) the level of personal savings held by renters at the start of the pandemic, (3) the loss of income and jobs experienced by private renters during the pandemic compared to mortgage holders, and (4) the high proportion of income spent by renters on housing compared to other tenures, and that these factors have led to renters missing bill payments or reducing spending on food due to their level of debt; and calls on Her Majesty’s Government to bring forward a support package that will ensure that private tenants are housed and landlords paid during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

[Baroness Grender (LD) [V]]

I thank all noble Lords, and in particular the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, in his new role as Minister. I congratulate him on the extensive use of the word “balance”; it was used more times than I have ever heard it used in a speech in my lifetime. “Balance” suggests that the opposite is somehow division, but I strongly stress that there is a lot of unity within the sector, in that landlords’ and tenants’ organisations alike say that some kind of support package is desperately needed.

The Minister made a very coherent argument against loans but most noble Lords were talking about the use of grants. When he writes to noble Lords, I look forward to him writing to me about that and about taking up the invitation set up by Citizens Advice to sit down with some of the affected family groups.

The House has already given a view on this and therefore I will not move my amendment.

Baroness Grender’s amendment to the Motion not moved.