Renters (Reform) Bill

Lord Hacking Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 15th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, I should begin with a short disclosure that my wife and I have in the next-door house under our ownership five one-bedroom flats, which are occupied by tenants whom we do our very best to look after well.

I do not often speak in your Lordships’ House, but in recent times I have found myself always at the bottom of the speakers’ list. I had higher hopes for this debate— I see that the noble Lord, Cromwell, takes bottom place and I am one away from that—because I was next to the noble Lord, Lord Frost, in the earlier draft of the list of speakers. He has kept his place and I have tumbled down to the bottom.

However, speaking late in a debate does give one the opportunity to refer to earlier speakers, and I do so most willingly. I thank the Minister for her excellent introduction, with which I found myself largely in agreement. I also take the opportunity to thank my noble friend Lady Taylor of Stevenage for her opening speech on behalf of my party. I particularly agreed with her comments on the impact of the changes in the many amendments that were moved in the House of Commons, and also with her comment that the Government have ended up just “kicking the can down the road”. I also agreed with her reference to the need for fundamental reform.

I am not going to go through all the speakers. I could do, because there were excellent speeches to comment on, but I will just refer to the noble Lord, Lord Best. His description of the switch of social housing to PRS was quite excellent. I am sure we are all grateful to him for his brilliant analysis of the current status of the landlord/tenant market.

I turn to the complexity problem. This is not the first Bill that inflicts much complexity on us and then on the users of our Bills. If only our parliamentary draftsmen could remind themselves of the Occupiers’ Liability Act 1957, which sets out in the simplest and clearest terms the liabilities of all occupiers of land.

What about this Bill? Its size is colossal. It is 194 pages long, containing 140 clauses and six complex schedules. In mastering this torrent of proposed legislation, we have had the benefit of excellent briefings from the Law Society, Justice and, most of all, our Library staff in their excellent briefing paper. Therefore, should we not remind ourselves, as we can remind ourselves in other Bills, that this Bill is directed to the fundamental right of all our citizens in the private rented sector to have the security of a decent home and to pay a fair rent, while likewise enabling landlords to provide just that?

I will return later to the great importance of such ordinary citizens having proper access and an understanding of the provisions of the Bill, but for now I will speak about when I first became aware of the relationship between landlord and tenant in the private rented sector. I was a young barrister in the 1960s when we were operating under the old rent Acts, where there was security of tenure and protection from unaffordable rent increases. It was in the terms of those Acts that no eviction could be made without cause.

There was one interesting provision in the old rent Acts that enabled a landlord to move a tenant from one property to another on the grounds of offering suitable alternative accommodation. That has not reappeared in this Bill. I criticise that not, but it is a rather nice memory.

I remind the House that under the old Acts the rents were controlled by the rent tribunals. What went wrong was that the rent was too low for landlords to invest in their properties, and many were in shocking condition. That was brought home to me in the 1980s, when my wife and I moved into a square in London then dominated by rent-protected properties, and we learned some appalling things. I will refer to two of them. There were two spinster ladies, I think well into their 80s, next door to us. They had no hot water in their rented property, nor indeed any heat provided except perhaps from the electric fire. They had a bath but no hot water to go into it. So they bought a washing machine and put it through all its motions without putting in any detergent, and when the hot water exited from the washing machine they had some water in the bath in which they could bathe themselves. We also learned in the square of a top-floor tenant who had no supply of electricity, and his only form of getting light into his flat was using a gas supply.

We should therefore be aware of what happened in this Bill’s long journey through the House of Commons. This was referred to by my noble friend Lady Taylor of Stevenage, but let us look at it in a little more detail. In Committee the Government tabled 183 amendments, including 52 new clauses and one new schedule. Well, bravo—but has the balance, as my noble friend suggested, been disturbed? My party tabled 81 amendments in the other place but they were all rejected. Those amendments were non-political, dealing with such things as proposed rent levels, notice-to-quit periods and financial penalties for landlords in breach. There are other examples that I could give.

On Report the Government excelled themselves even more. They moved 225 amendments, 24 new clauses and one further new schedule. Bravo again, but was the Bill improved? My noble friend Lady Taylor suggests the very opposite. Once again, all my party’s amendments were rejected. I have to say that the treatment of the legislature during the passage of the Bill through the House of Commons was most shoddy. As is the custom in this House, the Government can expect constructive amendments from all quarters. May all our amendments be properly treated.

The creation of the obligatory requirement for landlords to enter into the ombudsman scheme, the setting up of a digital property portal and the application of the decent homes standard are all most welcome, but they will all be defeated unless the court system can promptly deal with eviction or possession cases. Also, unless housing legal aid is massively increased to the levels that I remember in the 1960s, tenants will be forced to appear in the county courts as litigants in person to deal with the complexities of the provisions of this Bill. This is a burden on the judiciary and a cause of delay in the courts transacting this business. I look towards the Minister: may the Government in this House listen to us on the Back Benches and be willing to consider our amendments and judge them on their merit.

Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill

Lord Hacking Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 1st May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Thurlow (CB)]

My Lords, I have not heard a voice in the Chamber this afternoon against the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Best. It is such a refreshing amendment, it is long awaited, and we have heard, and we all knew, that his report was kicked into the long grass many years ago by the Government, and that is something of a disgrace. Even in the Levelling- up and Regeneration Bill debates last year, this subject was much discussed. We must not overlook that large cohort of hugely responsible and professional property managers—and there are many—but our focus must be on those who fail to adopt high standards, those who knowingly overcharge, those who take discreet commissions, and those in the pockets of clients with dubious standards.

This subject of rogue managing agents has come up again and again in this Bill; the time has come to act. The amendment clearly has strong cross-party support, and we have heard that the Government want to do it in principle. If the Government really want to do something for leasehold occupiers, this is it: simple regulation of property managing agents and other related property advisers; no one to practise without registration; a no-nonsense, strictly monitored and enforced system of effective supervision; and a simple, advertised complaints procedure for the lessees and rigorous monitoring of those complaints. This amendment has my wholehearted support. I hope the Government will adopt it; if not, I hope it is pressed on Report.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, I do not want to jump in front of my Front Bench, but this is not a Bill that I have followed in detail. I did not take part in the Second Reading, and I have not taken part so far in Committee, but I was in the House this afternoon, and that is why I am standing up to very briefly address your Lordships on Amendment 94, which should be fully supported. I declare a personal interest, and your Lordships will see how I can link that to supporting this amendment. My wife and I are both freeholders and leaseholders of five flats, which are in an adjacent house to our own house. We personally manage them and know all the tenants well, and we try to deal with all their needs and circumstances, but the time will come when we have to sell. It is that stage that I am worried about, to ensure that these leaseholds are properly managed under the auspices of the regulator.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to take part in this debate and to hear from such eminent experience across the Committee on this issue. On one of the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, about how far back this goes: one of my very first jobs in the early 1970s was at an estate agent. It was a family business run by somebody who had trained as a journalist and had a career in journalism, but he did, at least in that case, have the grace to train as a chartered surveyor as he carried on his business as an estate agent. You would have thought that things would have changed a bit over the subsequent years—it is quite a long time ago now—and it is ridiculous that it can still happen that people with little experience or qualification can be in charge of huge sums of other people’s money and property, and I hope that we can move matters on, at least in that respect.