Renters’ Rights Bill

Debate between Earl of Kinnoull and Lord Trees

Monday 7th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 48, which stands in my name. I declare my interests both as a landlord for my own part, to a small extent—all for properties in Scotland—and as trustee, in particular for the Blair Charitable Trust, all properties of which are also in Scotland.

At the earlier stages of the Bill, it was reflected by a number of noble Lords that pets promoted well-being among tenants; that is something with which I very much agree. I am looking at the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, who made a very good speech on this point at an earlier stage.

The thrust of this Bill is that there is a presumption that pets should be allowed in rented property. There are two protections for landlords. First, they can say no if it is reasonable to do so; we have just been hearing about some things that might not be so reasonable. Secondly, there is a protection for landlords, at least currently in the Bill, of deposits and insurance. However, social housing is not included in the Bill; indeed, it is specifically excluded. That seems to me very unfair.

I am grateful to the Minister and her Bill team, some members of which I can see sitting in the Box. They have been very generous with their time; we have been over this topic a number of times in the Minister’s meeting room upstairs. It seems to me that people in social housing are in many ways the people who most need the sense of well-being that a pet brings. I would be very keen that we make that change.

In the meeting—I do not want to steal any of the Minister’s thunder—a number of points were made to me about this area, and I must say that I have been brought along with those. I would be very grateful if the Minister could tell the House everything that she told me. I think that would be helpful to everyone on this amendment.

[Lord Trees (CB)]

I rise to support Amendment 48 in the name of my noble friends Lord Kinnoull and Lord de Clifford. It is a short amendment but, hopefully, could have a long impact. It would allow tenants in social housing some of the benefits with regard to keeping a pet that this Bill will provide for tenants in private properties. Tenants seeking social housing may not be in a position to buy their own property; if they did, they would have no problem with keeping a pet and they would have all the positives to which my noble friend Lord Kinnoull alluded in relation to well-being and health benefits. Instead, the Bill denies them those rights, which are enjoyed by tenants in the private rental market. I am curious to understand the Government’s explanation for this.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment 53A. Getting the balance right between landlords and tenants is something that was stressed by a number of speakers on the previous group of amendments, including the Minister. The Bill really amounts to a presumption that tenants can keep pets, on the one hand, and protection for landlords, on the other hand, in the shape of a deposit and insurance. Insurance is going to fall away because it was not available and would have entailed a high cost. Even if such insurance had been available, the loss ratio would not have represented good value for tenants. Good tenants would have lost all their money, whereas, as the noble Lord, Lord de Clifford, has pointed out, you can get your deposit back with interest at the end. I feel that a deposit is a very good way to go, and that is why I tabled Amendment 51. I was disappointed that the appearance of Amendment 49 was going to kill Amendment 51 by way of pre-emption. That is why Amendment 53A is a very good idea.

Pets damage buildings. We heard a lot about this in Committee, and the noble Lord, Lord Trees, may say something to remind us of all the unseen things that pets bring into the home. I am afraid that I feel that the survey by the academics at the University of Huddersfield is a rogue thing; it does not accord with my experience at all—and the Blair Charitable Trust is a reasonably sized landlord all round. Pets do damage things, but a deposit is a very fair way of adjusting the balance between the two people.

In Scotland, that deposit is set at two months. Here, if the correct level of deposit is five weeks and we add the risk of a pet on top of that, which was going to be taken out by the insurance as originally proposed in the Bill, it seems to me not to be a good balance that there should be no increase in the level of deposit protection. In the original Amendment 51, I had set the additional protection at three weeks because I considered eight weeks very similar to two months and I felt that having some symmetry between Scotland and England on this point was a good idea. I also felt, through experience, that Scotland, with two months of deposit, was okay, and that the balance between tenants and landlords was okay where pets were concerned. I feel that Amendment 53A has a tremendous amount of merit.

One of the points made to me is that Amendment 53A would add a lot of expense to tenants in the amount of deposit they would have to put up. I was just totting up how much our own two dogs cost to look after in a year, and it is a lot. Even though they probably eat better than some dogs, the dog food, inevitable visits to the vets—we do not buy insurance but it would amount to roughly the same as insurance is a pooling scheme—and all the various other things one has to do, such as finding someone to look after them if you go away on holiday, cost many hundreds of pounds a year. There is also the initial cost. I am talking about dogs, but it would be same for other pets. The website Pets4Homes has 1,625 dogs on it today, which cost between £400 and £3,000. Many people who have pets are engaging in something that is reasonably costly anyway, so asking them to provide another three weeks of security is perfectly fair and proportionate—especially if, having looked after the property well, they get back not only the interest on it but the money itself at the end. I am very pro Amendment 53A.

[Lord Trees (CB)]

My Lords, I too will speak to Amendment 53A, but first I thank the Minister and her team for their Amendment 49 and the consequential amendments, which will improve this Bill substantially. I thank her for the helpful letter about assistance dogs, which is a matter I raised in Committee and at Second Reading.

I support Amendment 53A. As many have said, it is extremely important that landlords are willing to accept tenants with pets—an objective with which all noble Lords would concur. This amendment would further that objective, and I think it is quite significant.

The costs incurred occasionally—it is only very occasionally but it happens—can be substantial. It goes way beyond a gnawed chair leg or a bit of wallpaper off the wall. As has been alluded to, if one has deposition of potential allergens in a property or a flea infestation, a real deep clean can cost hundreds if not almost thousands of pounds. Those costs inevitably fall on the landlord at the minute and are a considerable potential disincentive.

We have heard the figures from Huddersfield. Another figure is that 75% of landlords did not have a problem with pets. That means that 25% of landlords accepting pets have had some degree of problem. I note that 40% of landlords do not accept pets at all.

The deposit suggested in the amendment is proportionate and extremely important to assure landlords that, if there were to be negative results from a pet, they would get acceptable recompense. As the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, has pointed out, the deposit costs nothing if there has been no problem. It is returned fully, with interest, to the tenant. As he also pointed out, keeping a pet, particularly a dog—we are probably mainly concerned with what dogs can do—is a major financial responsibility and should not be undertaken by people who could not afford to put up a deposit of the size suggested. I support this amendment.

Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [HL]

Debate between Earl of Kinnoull and Lord Trees

Committee stage
Tuesday 6th July 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Trees (CB)]

Thank you, my Lords. I should like to speak to Amendment 3 in my name and Amendment 16 in the names of my noble friend Lord Kinnoull and the noble Lord, Lord Hannan.

Amendment 3 will sit in Clause 1, which introduces the animal sentience committee, and it seems right, proper and appropriate that the clause then goes on to describe the committee’s remit. That is to some extent covered in Clause 2(2), but my amendment goes further than that clause in two important respects. First, it stresses:

“The function of the Committee is to determine whether, in relation to the process of the formulation”—


and so on. It introduces the word “process”, which is critical to understanding the function of the committee. It is not influencing the policy or commenting on it. It can comment, and it has a remit to comment, on the process by which policy is formulated and implemented with regard to considering animal welfare implications. That is important. It may be a statement of the obvious, but it is perhaps sometimes worth stating the obvious.

Amendment 3, which would extend Clause 2(2), also refers to its remit to look at policy subsequent to the establishment of the committee, which would therefore have no right to retrospective review of policies previously formulated or implemented, even if they are in process at the time. This is an issue that a number of subsequent amendments on the list repeatedly allude to. It would therefore seem sensible to include that provision right at the beginning as a limitation on the committee’s remit.

Those are the main points: the amendment sets out the committee’s remit right at the beginning of the Bill, emphasising that its role is to comment on process, and would limit its remit to policy being formulated and implemented after the committee has been established.

Perhaps I may quickly speak to Amendment 16. It would restrict policy, which the Bill does not do; the Bill refers to “any government policy”, which is a huge remit. The amendment would restrict the policy to areas that were defined in Article 13 of the Lisbon treaty, which to some extent is the progenitor of the Bill. It seems sensible to make the scope of the committee more manageable, reasonable and pertinent by restricting that remit.

[The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register of the House, particularly those in respect of farming. I am chair of the UK Squirrel Accord and chair of the Red Squirrel Survival Trust. I apologise that I, too, was unable to speak at Second Reading, but I was in the Chamber for a good chunk of it, including for the winding speeches, and I have, of course, read Hansard.

I will speak to Amendments 16 and 35 in my name and briefly to Amendment 3 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Trees. My amendments are probing. Animal sentience, of course, is not in EU retained law as it was a treaty obligation and so was not preserved by the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. Article 13 of Title II of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union was therefore lost in the departure process from the European Union.

EU retained law is an interesting concept. In fact, it is a snapshot of EU law at 31 December 2020, which was then transposed into UK law. Of course, if you then want to make a change, changes are made expressly and with due process. That due process would seem to me to involve asking a number of questions. What was unsatisfactory about the previous arrangements? What are the benefits of the new arrangements that are proposed? What has been done to ensure that there are no unintended consequences? The noble Lord, Lord Hannan, in his Second Reading speech, summarised that by saying,

“to what problem is this Bill a solution?”—[Official Report, 16/6/21; col. 1918.]

I suppose I have merely tried to split that out. Thus, everything in EU retained law is anchored in the position quo ante as at 31 December last year. Things go on from there, but we knowingly make changes after that by going through a due process.

Before I go on to make some points, I thought it was probably interesting for everyone to understand the history of Article 13 a bit and how much Article 13 is a child of UK thinking. The original precursor appeared as a non-binding declaration as part of the 1991 Maastricht treaty, when, of course, there was a Conservative Government. It was proposed by the British. In 1997, with a Labour Government, it was promoted in the treaty of Amsterdam to being a binding protocol. In 2007, again under a Labour Government, it moved from being a protocol to an article in the Lisbon treaty. In each of those changes it was essentially a cross-party UK effort that put it there and placed sentience at the core of policy formation in the EU. It is a product of British thinking and part of our legacy within the EU.

This Bill is simply not consistent with Article 13 in two broad ways. Article 13 has the policy boundaries, which the noble Lord, Lord Trees, has just referred to. It also has the balancing factors that need to be taken into account when the issue is at question. Thus, I ask my three questions. What was unsatisfactory about the previous arrangements? What benefits are there to be found in the new arrangements? What has been done to ensure that there are no unintended consequences?

I hope to hear from the Minister in due course, but I went back and looked at the debates in Hansard for the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill in 2018. I looked at the Conservative manifesto. I have here under my left elbow the Explanatory Notes associated with this Bill and, of course, I have read and reread the Minister’s speech on 16 June at Second Reading. I am afraid that there is not really an answer to those questions. I have to say that, in the absence of that, Amendment 16 would restore the policy area boundaries, as the noble Lord, Lord Trees, has just said, and Amendment 35 would restore the balancing factors that must be considered. I think that the case for doing that is pretty strong.

In closing, I generally have a lot of sympathy with the amendments in this group, not just the one from the noble Lord, Lord Trees, but his amendment in particular is consistent with my logic and, if he comes back with it on Report, I hope to sign it.