Earl of Lytton
Main Page: Earl of Lytton (Crossbench - Excepted Hereditary)Housing and Planning Bill
Earl of Lytton Excerpts
The Earl of Lytton (CB)
I support the noble Baroness and, in doing so, I declare my interests, first as a professional property manager, and—possibly even more significantly—as a private sector landlord. I believe I have a very contented set of tenants, without any of the roguishness that we have heard about.
Leaving aside the absence of a clear due process in the Bill and the safeguards that should go with that, in what I can describe only as this “subcontract” process to local government, putting to one side the non-judicial disposal of a case that might result in the label “rogue”, with lasting stains on character, and parking for one moment the hiatus in terms of the standard of proof referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, there remains an overriding need for Parliament to retain scrutiny of the process, the safeguards and the standards. At the moment we seem to be short of a commitment on that.
I am also concerned that the whole process is a bit reactive, populist and, if I may say so, potentially discriminatory against a class of person called a landlord or their letting or managing agent. At Second Reading, I advocated—at least, I hope it was interpreted that way—perhaps going beyond that to try to support and nurture best practice, in equal measure carrot and stick. It seems to me that landlords can very easily be pilloried by their feckless tenants in the same way that tenants can clearly be very easily prejudiced by malevolent landlords.
There are probably at least as many undesirable tenants, in numerical total, as there are undesirable landlords. I do not say that in any way to cast aspersions on the tenants. I believe that the vast majority of them, in the same way as landlords, honour their commitments, try to do the best thing and genuinely create something that is growing in popularity. It is an expanding sector. The last thing we need to do is to set about damaging it so that people feel that they are under the cosh and go away. At Second Reading, I referred to the fact that our European neighbours seem to have sorted this out without this continual anti-landlord or anti-tenant adversarial approach in their dealings.
Therefore, we need to look at the whole situation and—if I may put it this way—somehow invert the process. Perhaps having the regulations before us is one step on the way so that we can look at that in detail and examine what the actual process is. At the moment, it would be possible for almost anything to be passed down to local government. As a vice-president of the Local Government Association, I would be slightly fearful, as a local government chief officer, of what might get passed down to me, thank you very much, as a hand-me-down to police this sector.
I support the noble Baroness. The key to this is very much to get these regulations out, and I support the general thrust of her amendment.
Lord Shipley
In a sense, everything has been said about this issue, but we must put on the record, for the avoidance of any doubt, that this amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, is extremely important. As we have heard, had it not been for the manuscript amendments, this would have been the first that we discussed. It brings to the fore the issue of principle about the role of your Lordships’ House.
I agree that the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee’s report is one of the most critical—possibly the most critical—that I have read. For that reason, it matters profoundly how the Government react to it. This House must be able to do its job properly. With so much being left to secondary legislation and so much that will not be with us by Report, the Government will have to do a very urgent job.
It has been asserted that perhaps the secondary legislation has not been drafted. It really ought to have been. If it has not been, we should be told. If it has been, and it is in a form that we could see, even if it is a draft of a draft, that would be extremely helpful. I think the Minister understands the strength of feeling in your Lordships’ House about this issue. I sincerely hope that she can respond positively to the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
My Lords, I support my noble friend’s comments and agree with everything that she has said. I shall speak specifically to Amendment 7, which is in this group and is a probing amendment.
Banning orders are a very important element of the Bill. They are not undertaken lightly and involve a great deal of research and work on the part of the local authorities. It takes many months of gathering information from tenants and consulting with related agencies operating in the sector, such as Citizens Advice, food banks, social services and local housing associations, to build up a picture around a person who they are investigating with a view to considering a banning order. Local authorities’ budgets are extremely stretched, as we know, and while it is to everyone’s advantage that they undertake this work in order to achieve a successful outcome when they apply for a planning order, it seems not unreasonable that they should receive the fine as recompense for the work undertaken. This will be especially important when it is highly likely that the local authority will be expected to house those previous tenants of the landlord subject to the banning order, as my noble friend has indicated.
There is an undertaking that local government will not be expected to take on new burdens that are not listed in the new burdens doctrine, with the expectation that the Chancellor will have had regard to this requirement when making the local government settlement. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm that this is the case. Might she also be able to find a way forward to recompense local authorities in some way for this additional work, which is desperately needed by private sector tenants?
The Earl of Lytton
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, has raised a very important matter, and it is appropriate that it should be grouped with government Amendments 3 and 4. As the noble Lord, Lord Deben, mentioned earlier, there is no limit to the amount of roguishness that can come about. As to the question of identifying who is the perpetrator, who the owner and who the person in control—is it a company and or an individual?—these are murky waters, particularly with patterns of complex ownership, possibly involving ownerships of non-domestic individuals or companies, and so it goes on. It begs the question, in terms of Amendments 3 and 4, as to what the person faced with the sanctions envisaged here will do under the government amendments in particular. What is the nuclear option? What are the choices before the case is even heard, let alone when it is actually heard? What happens when a conviction occurs and is subject to an appeal?
This leaves potentially malevolent folk, if that is what they are—we assume that the ones who are rogues are malevolent folk and are appropriately labelled as such—still with the considerable ability to make mischief and make life a misery. Whether that is spitefulness, simply being manipulative, or whatever, I see great problems. That is one of the reasons why I am concerned for local government being handed this issue on a plate. There may be very uncertain outcomes that are extremely costly to unpick. Bearing in mind what I said a few minutes ago, I am not in favour of short-changing due process. There must be due process. I do not think we can tackle roguishness that borders on, or may actually be, criminality, other than by proper due process. We cannot have the rule of law being circumvented to catch these people; we have to play this by the rule book. That is the only way in which not to discourage the willing horses while at the same time squeezing out the malevolent types.
I see, as the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, sees, some serious structural difficulties in dealing with this in practice. We have in this Committee the skills set to unpick this and to consider the complications and ramifications.
Baroness Redfern (Con)
My Lords, I support the Bill and welcome the following very clear measures to tackle the issue of rogue landlords that will strengthen the private rented sector.
Private tenants need additional reassurance that rogue landlords will be driven out of business, and banning orders for these criminal landlords and property agents is needed to prevent them operating and repeating serious housing offences. As a council leader, I believe that having the ability to apply for banning orders, together with fines, against rogue landlords and property agents is essential. This will prevent serious or repeat offenders, who are known to cause misery and harm to renters and place them at serious risk, from letting property. In such cases, there should be no room for these operators within the sector. I am pleased that the Government are determined to crack down on these landlords so that they either improve the service they provide or leave.
I also welcome the introduction of a much-needed database of rogue landlords and property agents. This will allow greater co-operation of local authorities around the country to keep track on banning orders and monitor ongoing trends. Having this national co-operation will, as I said, prevent serious or repeat offenders who are known to be causing misery and harm to renters and placing them at serious risk, from letting property, and there should be no room for these operators within the sector.
I ask the Minister to assure noble Lords that further government intervention against rogue landlords will happen and that she will collaborate with council leaders, like myself, in bringing a rogue landlord database to fruition as soon as possible.
Lord O’Shaughnessy
That is a perfectly good question. I was going to end by talking about the voluntary arrangements that have been discussed in both this area of registration and with the Housing Ombudsman. However, the amendment of my noble friend Lord Flight points to a simpler, lower-impact and more elegant way of gaining the information that we are after. Every time there is a change of tenancy or of ownership is precisely the point at which a new registration would have to be made. I do not believe you would need to send out forms every year; you would just need them when the occupancy or the ownership changed. That would provide a rolling database of the information that local authorities need.
The Earl of Lytton
My Lords, this series of amendments has raised some very interesting points. At Second Reading, I suggested a means whereby prospective tenants might get access to information on landlords who were signed up to a reputable body with established standards that it imposed on its members, and with current and valid membership of a dispute resolution and redress scheme. I am told that there is no such facility. My thought was to bring out the best and to lead from the front with the positives rather than try to deal with the negatives and, in so doing, squeeze out those rogues we have heard about. It was suggested to me by a residential managing agent of my acquaintance that it would be a bit like Checkatrade or TripAdvisor, particularly if it had user or customer—that is, tenant—feedback built into the system. However, I cannot see that that sort of thing can work by compulsion.
I am not an advocate of a compulsory scheme, as proposed by noble Lords in some of the amendments. It would have large costs; it would be readily circumvented, especially by the rogues; and it would suffer from a measure of disregard through ignorance among the 1.5 million one-unit property landlords. I tend, therefore, towards the solution of the noble Lord, Lord Flight, but, again, with some caveats. I would particularly like to know what proposed new paragraph 27A(2)(a) means in terms of the word “category”, and, with apologies to him, where Airbnb fits into the framework. The Government have already moved to facilitate this trend, which may be here today and gone tomorrow. How, therefore, do you keep track of that as a “category” in terms of art? A holiday let today may be an assured shorthold tenancy tomorrow, or vice versa. I see great practical problems in this regard.
There is, however, another problem about candid declaration, if one is going down this road. How frequently, given this quite rapid churn in the system, do you have to trawl for the information to ensure that it is bang up to date? What happens when something that has planning consent for, for example, holiday lets turns out to be on an 18-month assured shorthold tenancy, potentially in breach of planning control? For that matter, what happens when it operates in the other direction? There could be issues to do with planning or potential breach of private contract, and I wonder who gets to see and use the information garnered by this process. There is quite a quite dangerous mix of stuff here, with all sorts of people coming in with different motives. The truth is that, over many years, housing has become commoditised. It has gone beyond being the roof over your head and the security for your family; it is now an investment vehicle, a pension pot and a place to park a significant sum safely where you can manage it and see what is happening, as opposed to subcontracting it to somebody who manages portfolios on the stock exchange, where you may have less control. That brings all sorts of different motivations and methods of managing, owning and occupying property.
I said earlier that I would hesitate, if I were a local government official—which I am not—to delve into this issue. It has very significant resource implications. I still tend, therefore, to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Flight, but it has a number of holes and would provide far from perfect coverage. That said, we are beginning to drill down and head in the right direction, which is somehow to find a method whereby people will voluntarily sign up because they see it as being in their interests to do so—because they want to be seen as the good guys and the providers of quality, and not to be associated with the rogues about whom we have heard so much today.
I hope the Government will feel that there is merit in that. Perhaps with one or two tweaks—a combination of some of the things discussed in this group of amendments—we could end up with something of long-term benefit that would defuse some of the adversarial nature of what we have been talking about, which is corrosive to the sector and to relationships between landlords and tenants and ultimately may end up leading us around the houses—excuse the pun—several times without achieving what we need: the long-term betterment of the landlord-tenant relationship in the private rented housing stock.
Lord Foster of Bath
My Lords, we seem to be discussing two slightly separate issues in this group of amendments. The first is whether or not we need to have a register of all private sector rented landlords, and I certainly believe that we need to have that. As my noble friend Lord Greaves made very clear, if we do not know who owns a particular property or who is its landlord, it is very difficult to take enforcement action against them. It is also very difficult, as the noble Lord, Lord Flight, has pointed out, for a number of bits of government legislation to be effectively enforced without having such a register—for example, the requirement for landlords to vet the immigration status of their tenants.
Amendment 27 from the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, proposes a mandatory register and suggests that the way of filling the data in it is by requiring all landlords to sign up to it. As the noble Lord, Lord Flight, has pointed out, there are some difficulties with that: those landlords who are not particularly good, those who are on the border of being rogue landlords, are not likely to bother to provide the information. The noble Lord provides an alternative means of filling the data sets: using the form that is initially sent in for registering for council tax, although, as my noble friend Lord Greaves has pointed out, that is done by very many tenants only once in a blue moon.
So there are problems with how we fill the data set, but what is most important is that we hear from the Minister whether it is the Government’s view that we should be having a national database. Whether it is run at individual local authority level or nationally I am not that concerned about at this stage, but it is important to know what the Government’s thinking is about having a database of all private sector landlords. Then perhaps we could get together from all sides of the House to work out the details of how we could fill the data set and ensure that people registered appropriately.
The second issue is local authorities operating an accreditation or licensing scheme. There is a straightforward difference between Amendment 18 from the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, and my noble friend’s Amendment 33A. My noble friend suggests that this should be voluntary and local authorities can decide whether or not to do it, while the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, is suggesting that all local authorities must do it. I make it clear that I side entirely with my noble friend. It is right and proper that local authorities do this, but it is also important that we recognise that some local authorities have already found ways of doing it; across many parts of London there is already such a scheme, and other councils—for example, by using an Article 4 direction—have been able to do that.
Still, it is important that we treat these two issues as separate: first, with regard to the list of all private sector rented landlords so that we can ensure that legislation that we pass in your Lordships’ House will be enforced; and, secondly, that we allow discretion to local authorities to decide how best they wish to operate in the best interests of the people they seek to represent in local authority areas.