Renters’ Rights Bill

Lord Desai Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Desai (CB)]

My Lords, let me first say congratulations to the two maiden speakers. Let us hope that they enjoy being in your Lordships’ House.

I start by saying that we have a very distorted housing market. Among all the countries of Europe, we have the highest amount of home ownership—two-thirds of houses are home-owned. If you look at home ownership, social housing and private rental, you see that private rental is the stepchild of the country. When I first arrived in this country 60 years ago, there was a very healthy rental market. Indeed, until I arrived here, I had lived only in rental houses, in two different countries, in four different cities. The idea of owning a house was never there. After my first two attempts at renting flats, which I was very lucky with, everybody screamed at me, “Why are you renting?” They said I must buy, because mortgage payments were tax deductible so I really should stop all this tenancy business and buy.

We have subsidised home ownership outrageously. The only asset I know of on which you can make a profit and pay no capital gains tax is an owned house. If you have a housing market like that, it is no wonder that anybody who can at all afford to have a mortgage, even at the age of 12 or 13 or whenever, will get a mortgage from the bank of mum and dad. They will take a loan and buy a house.

We are, basically, leaving the rest of the population in two different categories. Those who are local, and qualify under the terms of the local council, get social housing. New Labour, unfortunately, did not build any social housing, so we do not have as much social housing as we used to. The people who are left, who cannot have social housing and do not have the money to buy a house, are in the category of private rental tenants. They are either transients, such as students who will be there for only two or three years and who do not really mind about the rent, or new arrivals in this country—immigrants—or people who are very poor but unable to get any social housing.

You have to look at the category of people trapped in the private rental category, who are, relatively speaking, in the worst-off section of society. We do not have what we used to when I first arrived here: comfortable three-bedroom houses for rent. We used to have unfurnished rentals.

The noble Lord, Lord Best, who is not in his place, mentioned Rachman and Rachmanism. He was an exploitative landlord, and the whole scandal about Rachman basically made people very hostile to this. Steadily since then, since 1965 to now, we have expanded one part of housing with subsidies but starved the private rented sector.

I do not want to talk about the details of the Bill because a lot of people have already done so, but we have to do something about the generous tax treatment of owned houses. In my view, this discourages people from investing in stocks and shares, as stocks and shares are taxed for capital gains but you are not taxed for capital gains in housing. We invest far too much in bricks and mortar and not enough in productive capital because our tax system is totally distorted. Anyway, that is not what the Bill is about. It is about the one- fifth of the population who are trapped in private rentals.

Importantly, if you are going to index rents, you should not index them to the consumer prices index. I urge the Government to ask the Office for National Statistics to construct a housing costs index. Landlords may have to pay for repairs and so on, which are different kinds of costs from the consumer prices that go into the consumer prices index. Landlords may find that it costs much more to repair a property or keep it in good shape than buying bread or sausages. We ought to do at least that little thing in favour of the universally disliked landlords. That might improve the performance of the Bill.

United Kingdom: The Union

Lord Desai Excerpts

Thursday 23rd June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Desai (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I too thank my noble friend Lord Lisvane for suggesting this topic. Going back to what I said earlier this afternoon and, again, talking about where I come from, India was supposed to have been acquired in a fit of absent-mindedness by the British. I think we have devolved in a fit of absent-mindedness. We have not devolved systematically; we have devolved by bits and pieces. That is the way we do things.

Let me start at the beginning: we are a union, not a federation. The problem is, can we become a federation while maintaining the unity of a union that is now coming apart? Because we do not do things formally, because we do things by bits and pieces and because our constitution is not unwritten but scattered all over the place—as the noble Lord, Lord Norton, has often reminded us—we have a very unsystematic way of doing things, but that is the way we do them. I think the time has now come to say that our unique pattern of doing things no longer works. The world has changed; people are very conscious of their rights across all classes. Therefore, it will not be possible for a few good chaps to come together and settle the problem.

At some stage, something formal will have to be done, if possible. The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and other noble Lords have made suggestions. The Government will not do anything formal and systematic in this. They have absolutely no interest in starting all sorts of controversies that they cannot control. The only agency which can do anything about this is your Lordships’ House. The suggestion made by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, is one that we should follow very seriously: to construct a meeting of the Parliaments of all the devolved Administrations, and your Lordships’ House, though not the other place, which has its own problems to deal with. Let us try to emulate what Scotland did: it had a convention which was informally and socially created, and which was discussing the problem of Scottish devolution ages before Scottish devolution was legislated. We need something like that.

Obviously, it would not have government authority or government sanction, but we ought to find ways of doing it informally, privately or whatever, meeting regularly to say, “This is a problem that we can all settle only jointly.” We must have serious lawmakers, lawyers and constitutional experts in our gathering, chosen from the already elected Members of the various legislative assemblies. A document of some sort could then be put forward that would prod any Government in power by then to do something systematic and thorough about preserving the union, and going from a union to a healthy federation of some sort. A union is too centralised a concept. India has become a union rather than a federation. I could bore all your Lordships on the difference between the Government of India Act 1935 and the Indian constitution, but that is for another day. It should be a federation, not a union.

I end by saying one small thing. When there was a proposal to reform your Lordships’ House during the coalition Government, we had a consultation by a Joint Committee chaired by Lord Richard. I submitted a note to that Committee, which is in print, suggesting that we should have a new version of your Lordships’ House, elected by single transferrable vote, from 10 regions of England and the three devolved Assemblies, with 30 Members each. If we had the House of Lords made up of people who were representing all the devolved nations and England, then we would have a federal Chamber.

We need the composition of a body as suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, to reflect that kind of balance. It should have people from each of the devolved agencies and from your Lordships’ House. It should work in its own time to propose a solution to the problem of the union. If we can do that, this alone will prod the Government of whichever party is in power to do something about it. Otherwise, Governments at the other end have no incentive to do anything about the union, because they have all the power and they are not going to give any of it up.

[Viscount Waverley (CB)]

My Lords, before the noble Lord, Lord Desai, sits down, I apologise for breaking in at the end of his remarks but if we were to agree and able to implement the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, this grouping should contain members of Sinn Féin and the SNP, so that we deal with all this in the fullest manner possible.

[Lord Desai (Non-Afl)]

I must confess that I am deaf, and the acoustics are absolutely terrible in here. I ask the noble Viscount if I can answer his question later on.

Covid-19: Housing

Lord Desai Excerpts

Monday 18th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh]

My noble friend makes the important point that we require all the skills of construction workers and that many of those were from EU countries. I am sure the immigration system that has been introduced by the Home Secretary will take into account our need for the skills to drive the construction industry. I can write to my noble friend with specific measures that are being taken. Obviously, we are doing what we can on this but there is nothing in particular to state at this point.

[Lord Desai (Lab)]

The Minister will be aware that a lot of high street shops are falling vacant. That was happening even before the pandemic broke out because of the growth of e-commerce. Is there any plan to convert some of these empty shop sites into housing for affordable rent?

[Lord Greenhalgh]

This Government recognise the importance of high streets and have injected a considerable amount of money into them. I will take up the noble Lord’s suggestion, get back to him in writing and place a copy in the Library.