Renters’ Rights Bill

Baroness Wheeler Excerpts

Thursday 24th April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, as someone who farms, albeit not on the same scale as the noble Lords who have spoken thus far, or indeed anywhere near it, I am very sensitive to the requirement for security of tenants. On the other hand, I know that—

[Captain of the King’s Bodyguard of the Yeomen of the Guard and Deputy Chief Whip (Baroness Wheeler) (Lab)]

Excuse me, can the noble Lord confirm that he was here at the start of the debate?

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

I was here earlier.

[Baroness Wheeler (Lab)]

But, as the noble Lord was not here from the start of the debate, I am afraid he cannot speak.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, for bringing a debate on possession grounds. This is an important issue, as it ensures that a landlord—who is often also the employer—can regain possession of a property when it is needed to house a new employee.

I will address Amendments 48, 49, 51 and 52, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Carrington. These amendments raise an important and complex issue concerning agricultural tenancies, particularly in the light of the proposed reforms to tenancy law, including the abolition of fixed terms and the removal of Section 21 no-fault evictions.

At present, agricultural landlords can avoid creating an agricultural assured occupancy—an AAO—by serving notice before the tenancy begins, thereby establishing it as an assured shorthold tenancy, or AST. This provides access to Section 21, which allows landlords to regain possession without the need to demonstrate fault. It is a mechanism widely relied on in the agricultural sector, where housing is often tied to employment or operational needs. With the removal of Section 21, this option will no longer be available. As a result, there will be a significant shift in the way in which agricultural landlords recover their properties. We must ensure that alternative grounds for possession are workable and fair, and can lead to the recovery of a property.

I do not suggest that there are easy answers here. However, I believe that this area requires careful scrutiny and targeted solutions. I believe the noble Lord’s amendments offer a useful starting point for this discussion and he has rightly brought this to the attention of the House. I urge the Government to consider these issues closely and to engage further with agricultural landlords to ensure that they have the means to house new farmers under their employment.

Finally, I will talk to the remaining amendments in this group: Amendments 50, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58 and 63. We must recognise the value of maintaining the availability of essential employment-linked housing and consider how best to safeguard it in practice. This of course must have thoughtful consideration, as the implications of any decision made affect not only the landlord and the employer but the broader rental market. I hope the Government will give serious consideration to the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, as part of a broader and much-needed discussion on how landlords can fairly regain possession of a property when a tenancy is tied to employment that has come to an end. I have milked many cows in my life, and even at Easter I was lambing ewes, so I know a lot about this.

Many roles with occupational housing are time-sensitive and hands-on. A new employee may require immediate access to the same accommodation as the previous employee in order to perform their duties. Herdsmen and herdswomen are often up at 3.30 in the morning to begin milking and shepherds may be lambing right through the night into the dawn, and for their own welfare as a family they need to be on site to fulfil that role. Animal welfare on farms also requires staff to immediately be available at all times, whether it is for calving, lambing, farrowing or just for sick animals, so accommodation on site is absolutely critical. The same applies to those managing diversification of agricultural properties and businesses, managing holiday accommodation or providing security for storage facilities on the farm, for example.

Failure to ensure timely access to such housing can have significant operational impacts. It can delay essential work and place considerable strain on the profit-making enterprises already operating within tight margins. This debate is therefore not only about the protection of property rights; it is fundamental to supporting those agricultural businesses, the people employed in them and the welfare of the stock on those farms, which rely so heavily on occupational housing as a practical necessity.

Holocaust Memorial Bill

Baroness Wheeler Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 11th March 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)]

I am sorry to comment yet again, but it seems to me deeply ironic that people who oppose it, and of course the controversy, then complain about the controversy and say it should be built somewhere else. It also seems ironic that people who have, as the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, said, campaigned against it and caused the delays now say that the delays are a reason for siting it somewhere else. I do not understand these points.

[Captain of the King’s Bodyguard of the Yeomen of the Guard and Deputy Chief Whip (Baroness Wheeler) (Lab)]

I remind noble Lords that interventions should be brief and for points of clarification. Can we now proceed with the debate? Thank you.

[Viscount Eccles (Con)]

I wonder if I could just make a very small point of clarification. As a personal view, I entirely agree that the memorial should be in Victoria Tower Gardens. What I worry about is the attempt to shoehorn in the learning centre as well. If we were able to have a standalone, well-designed, come-and-see memorial in Victoria Tower Gardens, it would get my vote immediately, because I also have in mind a world-class educational initiative, and I cannot see that the building proposed, or any of the preparations that have been made, go anywhere near creating a world educational initiative. In the world educational initiative, it is not only the understanding of what happened but what we think about it now and where we are going in these very difficult days where we have similar problems to face.

Holocaust Memorial Bill

Baroness Wheeler Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 4th March 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, this is not a memorial for the Jewish community—

[Captain of the King’s Bodyguard of the Yeomen of the Guard and Deputy Chief Whip (Baroness Wheeler) (Lab)]

The noble Lord was not here at the start of the debate.

[Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)]

I was under the impression that you could speak even though you were not.

[Baroness Wheeler (Lab)]

No.

[Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)]

Well, perhaps somebody else might like to make the point that it is not a memorial for the Jewish community.

[Baroness Wheeler (Lab)]

No. Thank you.

[Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)]

It is a memorial for everybody.

Renters’ Rights Bill

Baroness Wheeler Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Lytton (CB)]

My Lords, I have to declare a personal and professional interest with the private rented sector since 1968. Members of my family are also private rented sector landlords. I thank the Minister for introducing the Bill so cogently, and I add my tribute to our two excellent maiden speakers.

My professional training, which started in 1969 or thereabouts, involved an understanding of the Protection from Eviction Act, the Rent Acts, the rent officer service, rent assessment committees and fair rents. That regime, I know for certain, created a severe attrition of the private rented sector. The statistics show that it fell from 31% of homes in 1961 to under 10% in 1991, with substantial value write-downs in the process. The 1988 Act brought some relief and brought in shortholds. The emphasis was on the “short” bit; that was what it was intended to do, and you could not let for more than five years in the early stages. It has continued pretty much uninterrupted, under several subsequent Administrations. Even so, the proportion stood at 9.7% of homes in 2000.

The Government have been strident in their insistence that under the Bill no rent controls are planned, but I see the ability to challenge above-market rents, and the allied pressure for CPI pegging of rents and the whole question of affordability, to amount to the same principle of fair rents under the 1965 Act, give or take a bit, and likely to have very similar outcomes. At any rate, I believe that it is a distinction without a real difference, and could be adjusted and altered at the stroke of a pen.

The market will take note of this, looking at the headwinds and the new obligations under this Bill. My take is that the private rented sector is now destined for material decline. Halving it to the sub-10% of homes it was in 2000 seems a least a possible medium-term prospect. There will be no rush to the exit, just a steady attrition, with probably the 45% of the PRS in the buy-to-let component leading the way.

Does it matter, in what is actually a highly interconnected and joined-up housing sector, where people can move from one to the other? If the noble Lord, Lord Best, is right—I am glad to see him in his place —the surplus would be hoovered up by social landlords and new companies to be let at affordable rents— I assume this means an absolute maximum of 80% of market rent. However, having bought the property, which may need work and improvement, at market levels, to then let at a 20% discount, with rising costs and current interest projections, and the added duties, risks and so on, strikes me as improbable. I would like to know where the model for this is. Maybe he is right and giving incentives to sell to the sitting renter—those of them who have the cash—would be a way forward.

If these properties are released in dribs and drabs on to the general housing market, they cannot fail to have a dampening effect, likely over an extended timeframe, on the growth in housing values and the viability of new-build rollout because of the interconnected nature of the sector. I remind your Lordships that the CBRE suggests that there are at least 1 million consented residential plots that have not been built out and are sitting there waiting to go.

If I am right here, and we are moving to a higher proportion altogether of social rented property, then, again, the pressure on homes to purchase might, by that token, reduce. Good, I hear noble Lords say, but be careful what you wish for. Year-on-year increases in house prices are, in large part, what underpins our economy. From the Treasury at one end, with the tax revenues in sight, through developers and constructors, and local authorities to first-time buyers at the other end hoping to build equity in their home, this is all about money supply, banking, consumer spending and so on.

I am no fan of a model based on inventory rather than productivity—a point that the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, almost touched on. I consider, in any event, that it will only end in tears, eventually. But it is such an important driver in our post-industrial, service industry-based economy, where we in the UK have about the fifth or sixth highest exposure to property-related debt in the world, that it cannot be ignored.

So, what about the inventory valuation that sits behind this? Has anybody done the calculations? I see this Bill as having the potential to trigger much larger events in a system of very many moving parts. I hope it is not an adverse trigger. I would hate things to get back to the stage we were at in 2008. This is why I would prefer a less iconoclastic reform, despite all the ills and abuses in the existing private rented sector, which I readily acknowledge. I would like to see choice, flexibility, freedom to transact, ease of entry and exit and all the mobility that this implies. That also implies a fair balance. It is a world of complementary needs. We should remember, too, that after 2008 the expansion of the private rented sector was able to absorb a lot of the pain that would have otherwise resulted from that debacle. But I am afraid that I see a bulky document, inherently encapsulating more cost, risk and delay and a transactional drag while it all beds in.

We have to stop conflating the problems within the private rented sector with other matters such as social inequality, lack of affordability, housing costs, high and inward migration, employment problems, income distribution and so on. We have to remove it from that—

[Captain of the King’s Bodyguard of the Yeomen of the Guard and Deputy Chief Whip (Baroness Wheeler) (Lab)]

Excuse me. Will the noble Earl please wind up? The advisory time is seven minutes.

[The Earl of Lytton (CB)]

I am actually finished. If I am right, there is little that can be done with this Bill. None the less, I will engage in order to try to improve it. Like my noble ancestor Lord Byron, I deny nothing but I doubt everything.

Private Landlords: Tenants with Pets

Baroness Wheeler Excerpts

Tuesday 15th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, I am aware of the issue that my noble friend raises. The model tenancy agreement is the Government’s suggested contract with which to agree a tenancy and is freely available online. We will continue to work with landlords and other stakeholders to ensure its wider adoption for use in the private rented sector.

[Baroness Wheeler (Lab)]

My Lords, I understand from the excellent briefing from Battersea Dogs & Cats Home that tenants’ housing problems resulting from people moving to a property that does not allow pets are the second most common reason why dogs are given to Battersea for rehoming. Battersea helped to develop the model tenancy agreement but key areas, such as defining what constitutes a reasonable excuse for landlords to turn down a pet request or how any appeals process might work, are still to be addressed. How do the Government plan to take these issues forward?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, it is fair to say that Battersea Dogs & Cats Home has been involved in the development of this agreement. Indeed Peter Laurie, the Battersea Dogs & Cats Home interim chief executive, welcomed the announcement that demonstrated the clear continued commitment to improving access to pet ownership for renters as well as helping to support and promote responsible pet ownership. The purpose of the agreement is to ensure that there is no blanket ban on pets and to consider each pet on a case-by-case basis, and to accept a pet where they are satisfied that the tenant is a responsible owner and the pet suitable for the premises.