Housing: Rent Payment History

Lord Davies of Oldham Excerpts

Wednesday 31st October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

That is why the consultation is being extended, and it is open to all those parties to feed into it. I gave the example of Experian. By categorising the rental contributions of people in social housing, it was possible for 80% of the 1.2 million people included in the survey to increase their credit rating, meaning that they would have access to lower-cost credit. That is very much what we want, and we believe that, after a long time and a lot of pressure, we are beginning to head in the right direction.

[Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)]

My Lords, first, we too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Bird, on the progress that he has made on this issue and on the progress of his Bill. Her Majesty’s Opposition will of course be supporting the Bill in the Commons, as we did here. Will the Government? Secondly, if the Minister is committed to ensuring that advances are made on the basis of legislation such as this, has he or any other Minister participated in meetings with credit service providers to discuss how to use the data which is now being compiled and which ought to be used as rapidly as possible to the benefit of ordinary citizens?

[Lord Bates]

A review of high-cost credit was undertaken by the Financial Conduct Authority, which took evidence from a wide range of people. On the specific point about the Bill, the noble Lord will recall that when we discussed it, while being sympathetic with its ambitions, we chose to go another route and to introduce the Rent Recognition Challenge to see whether fintech companies could come up with a solution. We believe that that is beginning to bear fruit. The announcement made by Experian last week is evidence of that.