Housing: Rental Market

Debate between Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Tope

Thursday 2nd November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, who raised this issue on a previous occasion. I will look at it. However, it is important to remind the House that many farmers are diversifying into tourism and the short-term letting of accommodation that may be surplus to their requirements is a useful source of income. It is important that rural areas that depend on tourism have a good supply of short-term accommodation for letting in order to support a viable tourist industry.

[Lord Tope (LD)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware of the research done for the Residential Landlords Association which showed, among other things, a 75% increase in a year in London in the number of multi-listings on the Airbnb website, despite the company’s announced crackdown? Does he agree that this suggests that a growing number of landlords are switching away from long-term letting—which, frankly, London desperately needs—because of the greater financial incentives for short-term lettings? What consideration are the Government giving to offering incentives to landlords to provide more longer-term tenancies?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. It is not possible for landlords in London to switch rented accommodation wholly over to short-term letting because of the restriction that I mentioned earlier: short-term lettings can only be for up to 90 days. Therefore, it would not be possible legally for a landlord to let his property on a short-term basis throughout the year. One has to get a balance. London has to compete with other tourist destinations and tourists expect to find a range of accommodation through organisations such as the one the noble Lord mentioned. Many London boroughs do not have an adequate supply of hotels, and therefore one needs a supply of short-term letting accommodation. Also, many Londoners, in their efforts to make ends meet, like to rent out their home on a short-term basis when they are not using it themselves.

Housing and Planning Bill

Debate between Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Tope

Thursday 10th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I understand the point that the noble Lord is making but he may recall an intervention that I made on Tuesday: the trouble with the alternative means of funding the commitment is that it increases the PSBR. There, you hit another real constraint from the Treasury in delivering the Government’s overall macroeconomic policy.

[Lord Tope (LD)]

My Lords, we have very many reasons to be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, but I suspect that in years to come he may well be remembered most for giving us the term “manifesto fundamentalism”. I was going to attempt to define it, but the noble Lord has just done so in a very much better way than I could. Maybe it is something like “the irrational adherence to a manifesto detail when there is a demonstrably better way of achieving the greater policy objective in that manifesto”. I am sure that, over time, others will be able to refine that definition more, but I think that that is what we are talking about—an irrational adherence to a clearly poor way of achieving the objective.

My noble friend Lady Bakewell at the beginning of the debate—

[Lord Young of Cookham]

Does the noble Lord think that the commitment on tuition fees may possibly fall into that definition?