Renters’ Rights Bill

Lord Howard of Rising Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howard of Rising (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as an owner of rented property. The last Government introduced a Bill to reform the rental market; it was a rotten idea then, and it is a rotten idea today. Although I believe it is extremely well intentioned, it will undoubtedly do more harm than good. I am constantly amazed by the belief of Governments, in the face of evidence and common sense, that they can improve things by intervening in a market that works. Last week, I quoted the late Milton Friedman:

“If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there’d be a shortage of sand”.


If this Bill is enacted, then, in five years, there will be an even greater shortage of rented accommodation than there is at present—that is, if anything more than a token market remains.

Landlords are already creaking under the weight of tax and bureaucracy, and the rental market is shrinking. Rented accommodation will always be needed, as a number of noble Lords have pointed out, but the policies the Government are proposing will result in a further reduction of the amount of rented property available. Decreasing supply coupled with the increasing demand will serve only to push up costs for new tenants.

The Government’s tortuous manoeuvring around rent controls will not work. Under the Bill, any tenant who disagrees with a rent increase can go to a tribunal. At that tribunal, rent can only be reduced: it can never be increased beyond the landlord’s proposal, however modest that proposal may have been. It is a win-only bet for the tenant. Even if a proposed rent increase is ruled acceptable, the tenant does not have to start paying it until the tribunal has concluded. Who knows how long that could take? At best, the tenant gets a rent reduction, at worst a delayed rent increase. Why would every tenant not appeal on every possible occasion? The tribunals will be swamped and the delays will become unreasonable.

There is another problem with rent tribunals. The tribunals’ job is to determine what the market rent should be and to ensure that rent increases do not exceed it. If rents never go above an existing market rate, the market rate will not change; it will stay exactly the same. To state the obvious, landlords let their premises in return for rent. To create a situation where the return on investment is static because the rent never goes up, but costs go up, can result only in a reduced supply of rental accommodation.

In Berlin, in 2020, they introduced a law to maintain rents at 2019 levels for five years. Because of that law, the number of new rental properties coming on to the market fell by almost half and the scheme ended after less than two years. Similar legislation in Scotland has resulted in a significant reduction in rental stock and the highest rent increases in the United Kingdom. In Ireland, because of the shortage of rental accommodation, foreign students ended up sleeping in tents. The evidence of the harm that can be done by Governments trying to interfere in the market stares us in the face.

There are many problems in the Bill and I have commented on only one of them so far. To burden landlords with some of the other suggestions in the Bill will only accelerate the landlords’ exodus from the market. As my noble friend Lady Scott said, around 90% of landlords are individuals, of whom nearly half own only one property. Many of them will not have the resources to cope with the Government’s new demands. I remind the Government that landlords already have considerable overheads to maintain their properties: gas safety test certificates are needed every year; electrical installation condition reports are required for each new letting, or every five years; energy performance certificates are obligatory; and the demands of what they must achieve increase every year. Landlords are legally required to vet their tenants, and tenants can complain to their local authority if rules are not complied with.

Those are some of the costs of bureaucracy that landlords face already. The Bill makes the burdens worse. Demands will include limiting deposits to one month’s rent. The existing five weeks in no way covers the damage caused by a bad tenant. Landlords will not be able to refuse pets, despite the almost inevitable damage. I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Black, that I have never refused a pet, and they have invariably cost me money way over and beyond any deposit. I will never refuse one either, by the way.

Fixed-term tenancies are to be abolished, even where they are in the interest of both parties, such as the majority of student accommodation. The threshold needed to be breached for eviction for anti-social behaviour or rental arrears is being raised. Up to now, the ability to use Section 21 ensured that tenants behaved in a neighbourly manner.

There will be much to deal with in Committee. I will spare your Lordships any more today.

Holocaust Memorial Bill

Lord Howard of Rising Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 4th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howard of Rising (Con)]

My Lords, I cannot think of any possible or rational reason for objecting to a memorial to something quite so awful as the Holocaust, but I think there are strong reasons for objecting to the proposed monument being located in Victoria Gardens. There is the aesthetic: the proposed design is out of keeping with its surroundings. Anything quite so hideous and inappropriate as this off-the-shelf toast rack, as the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, described it, would in normal circumstances have been blocked by English Heritage, which has a duty towards the surroundings of buildings of national importance such as the Palace of Westminster. UNESCO’s criticisms and objections have been ignored.

The shocking act of bulldozing through the protections that surround Victoria Gardens so that it can no longer be used for peaceful enjoyment by the generations to come is distasteful. To abuse the generosity of WH Smith would be bad enough; to do so with something so controversial which will destroy the atmosphere and peace of the gardens is vandalism. Stating that only a small percentage of the site will be taken up does not allow for the numbers going through or the necessary security arrangements mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile.

From a practical point of view, how will the projected extra 1 million visitors be coped with? The whole area is cordoned off for state occasions and, regularly, for demonstrations. Even today, I had to get out of a car and walk from Whitehall because one could not get to the Palace of Westminster. Sometimes, residents in the area around Smith Square have found that there is only one street by which they can access their house, and that is from the west. Anyone trying to get to their homes from the east may have to go south of the river, come back across Vauxhall Bridge and approach from the west. What will happen when the hordes of visitors are trying to gain access to the memorial and cannot walk through Parliament Square? There are projected to be 11 busloads a day. Where will the buses drop off, and where will they park while they are waiting? When there are demonstrations, spare parking is taken up by police reserves.

Some of the main objectors to the memorial are members of the Jewish community. Their objections are not to a Holocaust memorial but to a location where it would cause offence, inconvenience, controversy and general unhappiness. The proposed memorial could also quite possibly act as a beacon to anti-Semitism. I urge the Government to find a more appropriate location for this very worthwhile project and not put it in a place which creates antagonism and thereby fuels the fires of anti-Semitism.