Gujarati Community in the UK

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Wednesday 30th October 2019 Westminster Hall

[Neil O'Brien (Harborough) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) in the warmest terms on securing the first ever debate in the Commons about the role of Gujaratis. The story of the Gujarati community in Britain is inspirational. He has already mentioned the Gujaratis’ incredible get-up-and-go enterprising qualities. Many of them, particularly in my constituency, fled here from the murderous Idi Amin with nothing but the shirts on their backs, and they have built incredible businesses and transformed the local economy. If I were to name all of them in my constituency, we would be here for days.

The Gujaratis have made an incredible social contribution to our area—they are social entrepreneurs. As part of the wider Indian community in my constituency, they run countless voluntary groups, community groups and charities, with a particular emphasis on helping and caring for older people. It is always wonderful, when I go to Gujarati homes, to see the grandma and grandpa seated with great respect at the end of the table. That is a wonderful part of the culture that we could all learn from.

The Gujarati community is a patriotic community that has become integrated and part of the great tapestry of this country. I enjoy the cultural contribution that it has made to my constituency; there have been huge Diwali celebrations in recent weeks in Leicestershire. I particularly enjoyed dancing at the Navratri celebrations at Gartree High School in my constituency. As hon. Members might imagine, I am a terrible dancer, but it is a warm and forgiving community, so it was wonderful to be there.

[Mr Jonathan Lord (Woking) (Con)]

I pay tribute to the Surrey Hindu Cultural Association, which is based in Woking. It is not a huge community, but it puts on the most amazing Diwali festival every year, for which all the citizens of Woking are grateful. That also takes place across many other constituencies, and we pay tribute to the community for that.

[Neil O'Brien]

That is extremely nice to hear.

What more can we do? I am always working to make sure that everybody is looked after in our community, which is one reason I support drives to get more tissue and blood donations, which we are desperately short of, from Gujarati and other Indian communities. I also work to improve community life and relationships between the different communities in my constituency, which is why I am pressing my local councils to try to find space for a Hindu community centre. We have lots of churches, a great mosque and a wonderful gurdwara, but people still have to go into the city to go to a temple. I would love to find something to house all those wonderful voluntary groups in my constituency.

To summarise, the story of the Gujaratis in Britain is a story of enterprise, strong family life, charity and strong voluntary commitments. It is a story about a group of patriotic people who have come to this great country and put down deep roots.

Building Safety

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

Local authorities have robust enforcement powers available to them, and we are working closely with them to guide and support them. If the hon. Lady would like to come to me with examples, I would be very happy to support her.

[Neil O'Brien (Harborough) (Con)]

First, tenants at Edwin Court in my constituency are having to move out of their homes while vital fire safety work is carried out. Will my right hon. Friend ensure that all housing associations look after their tenants in the process of such work? Secondly, will his review look closely at inadequate fire doors? Inside Housing’s review of this issue is very concerning, as have been answers I have received to parliamentary questions.

[Robert Jenrick]

I am very happy to work with my hon. Friend on that issue. We have already published updated advice notes on fire doors. It is an important issue that we want to take forward.

Local Government Funding

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Wednesday 27th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Thelma Walker]

Thank you for chairing this part of the debate, Sir Christopher. I thank my hon. Friends for their passionate speeches, in which their compassion for their communities really came through. I thank the Minister for his response. What came through to me is a lack of caring from him. I just heard words, but I do not feel compassion. I am sorry. The fact that there has not been one Conservative Member here to stand up and speak in support of the Government’s cuts to local government speaks for itself.

[Neil O'Brien (Harborough) (Con)]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Thelma Walker]

No, it is too late. The hon. Gentleman was not part of the debate. The reality, as expressed so compassionately by my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon), is that communities are hurting: we have food banks; we have children with special needs waiting for appropriate support; and we have homelessness. That is the reality. I hear words but I do not hear compassion and care.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved.

That this House has considered local government funding.

Local Government Funding Settlement

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Thursday 13th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

First, I hope that the hon. Lady’s voice gets better quickly in time for Christmas. There will be a 75% business rates retention pilot in Newcastle in 2019-20, which will release additional funds to meet some of the pressures that she highlighted, and core spending power will increase further. We must also look at the devolution deals and all the support and investment being provided. I hope she sees the positive things in this statement that will address a number of the points that she highlighted.

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough) (Con)]

It is very welcome that Leicestershire will see a 4.4% increase in its core spending power next year, and it is extremely welcome that we will get a business rates retention pilot worth £13 million; I thank Ministers for meeting me to discuss that. However, the local government funding formula is opaque and unfair, and Leicestershire is unfairly under- funded. Can the Secretary of State assure me that he will continue to look at a fair funding formula and look closely at the Leicestershire model, for comprehensive reform?

[James Brokenshire]

I thank my hon. Friend for his active participation in our work on long-term funding and the fair funding review, and I thank Leicestershire for its participation in and support for that. He highlighted some of the announcements today, including the benefit of around £14 million for Leicestershire. He has been a good and active champion. We want people to be engaged in the fair funding review, to ensure that we learn from the evidence, so that we get this right.

Parking (Code of Practice) Bill

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 23rd November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to support this Bill, a sound piece of legislation sponsored by a sound Member from a sound part of the country. We should get on and pass it without further delay.

This is a serious issue. Some 10,000 people have been in contact with Citizens Advice over the past year in relation to parking fines, which can be traumatic and stressful for people who suddenly receive bailiff notices, threatening letters and other mail. One of the great things about this Bill is its flexibility; it is not a clunky thing that will become outdated as practice changes in the parking industry. Instead, the Bill will allow us to be flexible over time.

My experience demonstrates the need for this legislation. I have had experiences where certain operators have given me unfair fines, perhaps because they have wrongly typed in my car registration, and I have had successful redress and the fines have been dropped. In other cases, where the operators were more like the cowboys mentioned by the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), I have not been successful. The Bill will bring coherence to the system and ensure a fair deal for everyone throughout the country.

It is brilliant that the Bill is supported by the industry. Andrew Pester, the chief executive officer of the British Parking Association, agrees that a single code is important to ensure that unscrupulous providers do not undermine the parking sector with bad practices. The Bill will allow future Ministers to be able to sort out the issues that other Members have raised, to avoid excessive fines, to avoid the failure to give notices, to avoid excessive legal charges in pursuing those things, to stop the sending of threatening letters to vulnerable people and, above all, to strike off cowboy operators by making it impossible for them to trade.

This is a superb Bill. It is exactly the sort of thing that this House should be doing, and it will be hugely welcomed by constituents. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight), who has done this country a service by bringing forward this excellent Bill.

Homes (Fitness for Habitation) Bill

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 26th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Neil O'Brien (Harborough) (Con)]

I wish to make a brief contribution, mainly to congratulate the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) on an excellent piece of incredibly important legislation, which I am glad to support.

Those of us have been following the #ventyourrent campaign initiated by Generation Rent on Twitter have seen incredible squalor in some parts of the private rented sector. Even this week, we have seen on the front page of The Guardian two days in a row incredible examples of problems with repeat offending slum landlords. There is clearly a big problem and I know that Ministers are thinking about it. The Bill, which I hope will be given its Third Reading today, is an important contribution to the empowering of tenants to help to clean up some of these problems. It will clearly not be the end of the story, and we need to think about enforcement and how we can enable it to pay for itself by fining and taking the property of repeat offending slum landlords, but it is a pleasure to support this important legislation today.

Rating (Property in Common Occupation) and Council Tax (Empty Dwellings) Bill

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Tuesday 16th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Rishi Sunak)]

I beg to move, That the House agrees with Lords amendment 1.

It gives me great pleasure to speak in support of the amendment. As previously discussed in this House, this Bill takes forward two important measures that featured in the Chancellor’s Budget speech of last November. The first fulfils the Government’s promise to end the so-called “staircase tax”, giving welcome relief to businesses. The second, which is the subject of our deliberations today, addresses the issue of long-term empty homes, doubling to 100% the council tax premium that local authorities can charge on homes that have been empty for two years or more.

[Neil O'Brien (Harborough) (Con)]

Is the Minister aware that in my constituency the number of empty properties has been driven down by a third by the existing empty homes premium? I am delighted to see this measure, because it will reduce the number of empty homes in my constituency, which is currently at 400—that represents a village the size of Great Bowden. That means far less pressure on development and a better use of our housing stock.

[Rishi Sunak]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention and for his support for the measures in this Bill. I also pay tribute to his local authority for the sterling work it has clearly done, as have so many others across the country, in tackling this blight of empty homes. I am particularly grateful to him, because I know he has another housing-related debate coming up in short order and so I am privileged that he has made time to speak in support of this measure. I wish him well in his further debate later this afternoon.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rishi Sunak]

I can see my diary filling up rapidly as the debate progresses, but I would be delighted to visit my hon. Friend and the successful redevelopment. Indeed, I will perhaps mention it to my hon. Friend the Housing Minister for when he is next in the area.

[Neil O’Brien]

I promise not to invite the Minister to my constituency—although I stress that he is always very welcome there. He tempted me to intervene with his mention of the pub that was brought back into use through the “No Use Empty” programme. Does he agree that this legislation is an example of a wider point that needs to be discussed: the reuse of our existing building stock more generally? Permitted development rights and other things that make it easier to reuse older buildings have taken the share of new properties coming on to the market through change of use from about 12% of supply to 20% of supply over the past couple of years. Does he agree that that is saving a huge amount of countryside?

[Rishi Sunak]

As ever, my hon. Friend makes an insightful point. He has great experience in this area. Indeed, he has published proposals relating specifically to this area, on which my hon. Friend the Housing Minister is engaging with him. More intelligent use of development rights and our existing stock can help play a part in solving the housing market problems that we see.

Housing and Home Ownership

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Tuesday 16th October 2018 Westminster Hall

[Neil O'Brien (Harborough) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered housing and home ownership.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I recently published an 80-page report for the think-tank Onward. Members will be relieved to hear that I do not intend to read it out today, but I want to talk about some of the themes in it.

This is a short debate, so I want to ask the Minister just two questions. First, will he update us on his thoughts about how we can increase home ownership by rebalancing things between the private rented sector and home ownership? Building more homes is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition of reversing the decline in home ownership. Over the past decade, the private sector has built about 165,000 extra houses every year, but home ownership fell because the private rented sector has expanded by 195,000 homes every year. Multiple property ownership has been squeezing out home ownership for individuals. Private landlords are not doing anything wrong, but we have to ask ourselves as a country whether we want so much of our housing stock to flow into renting, rather than owning.

To rebalance things back towards ownership, we could do a number of things. We could introduce a capital gains tax break for those who want to sell their rented property to their existing tenants. For future rented properties, we could change the tax treatment to encourage people to put their investments into stocks, shares and businesses, rather than just into bidding up the price of housing. Rebalancing in that way could make a big difference. To give a sense of the magnitude, I should say that if we had kept the ratio of privately owned to privately rented homes the same between 2000 and 2015, 2.2 million more homes would be in ownership. That would make a huge difference—at least as big a difference as we could make by increasing the rate at which we build homes.

We know that tax can be effective. The changes brought in by the then Chancellor in 2015 saw the first substantial increase in home ownership for a decade in the following year. I hope that the Minister and his colleagues at the Treasury are thinking about ownership. If we only think about the supply side of the market in challenging the housing problem, we are effectively fighting with one hand tied behind our backs.

The second thing I would like the Minister to update us on is his and the Government’s overall vision for what, where and how we build. The ultimate constraint on how much we build is public consent. If we want to build more, we need to tackle the underlying reasons why people oppose so much of what is built today. For me, there are three underlying reasons. First, too often we build in the wrong places and we lose the green spaces that people value the most. Secondly, we build without the required infrastructure. Thirdly, there are too few benefits for existing residents.

How can we solve those problems? That requires different things in different places. It means building more in the centres of our great cities—densifying them and regenerating more land. Outside our cities, it means more stand-alone, planned new communities and fewer tacked-on developments stuck on the edges of all our existing villages and towns. Everywhere, it means sharing more of the benefits of development with existing residents so that they can see those benefits.

Let me unpack that a little bit. There is lots of room in our great cities for growth. Glasgow, Newcastle, Liverpool, Middlesbrough, Sunderland, Hull and Dundee all had a smaller population in 2016 than they did in 1981. Other cities such as Manchester and Birmingham were only about 6% bigger. There is lots of room to grow in our great cities, and there are lots of reasons to densify the centres of those cities: it is greener; it means less congestion; it means more people walk to work, which in turn is healthier; and infrastructure costs are lower. There are lots of ways to make it happen. To put ideas in the Minister’s head, we could change objectively assessed need to favour inner-city development, to take into account the potential for cities to densify. We could further liberalise building upwards and amend change of use to allow empty shops to be turned into homes.

We could devolve further powers over transport beyond the mayoral combined authority areas. Mayoral authorities such as in London have powers over public transport and the buses. That means they could have denser development, because they can ensure good public transport to it. We could review sightlines in London and build upwards. We could do what the think-tank Create Streets recommends and review regulations so that we can once again build those tall, dense terraces that are so beloved by the population. We can do a lot more in our cities, but we will continue to want to build outside our cities, including in rural areas.

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for bringing this debate to the House. His suggestions are good. Does he think that housing provision for people with disabilities should be improved as well? At a sitting of the Select Committee of which I am a member last week, I argued that the Government should implement approved document M4(2). It sounds a bit wordy, but that is about making new homes accessible and adaptable by default. Does he agree with doing that? That measure includes provisions for a wheelchair standard for new homes.

[Neil O'Brien]

The hon. Lady has a very interesting idea, but I am not familiar with that measure. I will have to go away and look at it.

Outside of the cities, we generally build right up to existing developments. I see that in my constituency.

[Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and bringing this crucial debate to the House. Does he agree that unless we radically reform our local planning system, we will never get the planning applications through and the houses built that we need? We need to build in huge numbers—more than the Government are proposing at the moment.

[Neil O'Brien]

I utterly agree; I was about to make that very point. At the moment, we infill bits on the edges of every village and town. We are effectively building in the places that annoy people the most, so we do not build enough homes, as my hon. Friend said. When we do that, we cannot keep up with the infrastructure needs of these places, because it is physically impossible. Perhaps the primary school is on too small a plot or we cannot widen a road that has become a rat run because there is not enough money to meet infrastructure needs.

Previously, we did things very differently. There was the new towns programme: those new towns now house more than 2 million people very successfully. They are fast-growing places. Mrs Thatcher created docklands in London and Liverpool, and the model was roughly the same for both. A development corporation would buy land cheap at existing low values. It would assemble the land, install the infrastructure and sell on that land for uplifted values, therefore paying for itself. That model has been used successfully all over the world.

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend who, as ever, is making a very persuasive case. His Onwards report is very good, and he is contributing to what I would call the battle of ideas. He mentioned Margaret Thatcher, who was at the forefront of that. The Centre for Policy Studies published a paper on “help to own” on Monday. We want to be in this space to address some of the big challenges we are facing on planning, taxation and infrastructure, but we also need to try to persuade other parts of the Government—including the Treasury and our dear colleague in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government—to address some of the bigger issues of intergenerational fairness. A whole generation is locked out of home ownership, and we want to help them get back on the ladder so that we can become that property-owning democracy again.

[Neil O'Brien]

My right hon. Friend makes an extremely profound and important point.

A lot of councils are now getting back into the business of building new places. They are being forced to, because if they do not want to mess up every village and town in their area, they need to build new stand-alone places. We need to ensure that they have the tools and expertise they need to make that work.

[Scott Mann (North Cornwall) (Con)]

My hon. Friend has brought a very important debate to the House. When we build around existing settlements, we tend to have inflated land values before things have even started. Having new settlements will allow us to capture some of that value to provide some of the infrastructure. Does he agree?

[Neil O'Brien]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I agree in the strongest possible terms, and will come to that point in a second.

Where there have been good new planned settlements, such as Poundbury or Nansledan, they have often been because of a visionary landowner in the area, but we cannot always rely on that. Sometimes, other good ideas have gone wrong because developers have wiggled out of their commitments or planners have failed to get control over the land. How do we make sure that we always build good new places? I would love to see Homes England become a supporting masterplanner for local authorities. I would love us to build on the housing infrastructure fund, which is a brilliant initiative. I would love more central encouragement, which is already coming from the Minister, for good vernacular design.

As ever, the other thing we need is money. That brings me to the third of the reasons why people oppose development—because there is not enough benefit for existing residents. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Scott Mann) mentioned, when planning permission is granted, there is typically a big increase in the value of land, but too little of that flows to existing residents. The Centre for Progressive Policy estimates only about a quarter of the value goes to the local community.

[Andrew Lewer (Northampton South) (Con)]

My hon. Friend mentioned money. Many of the councillors in Northampton welcomed the lifting of the borrowing cap on the housing revenue account. Does he share my hope—this reflects the comments made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel)—that that will be used for shared ownership or owned properties, as well as just for social housing?

[Neil O'Brien]

I do. That is perhaps for the Minister to answer rather than me, but I absolutely agree that it would be a good thing to do with the extra borrowing power.

How do we capture more of the benefit for the community? We could reform section 106 and the community infrastructure levy and take off the various limits that apply. We could create transparency by creating a register of all land options so that we know what people are paying for land and we stop viability being used as an excuse not to pay for vital infrastructure. We could change the national planning policy framework so that sites do not get put through the strategic housing land availability assessment unless they can pay for their own infrastructure. We could give local authorities the fiscal firepower to assemble land and be their own developers and masterplanners. We could reform land compensation and the Land Compensation Act 1961 to reverse the changes made by unelected judges in the 1970s. A group of organisations, including Shelter, Onward and the Campaign to Protect Rural England, recently came together to call for just that.

As well as more benefits for the local community generally, we also need to see more specific benefit for those most affected by development—those who are right next to it. What about offering cheap homes for sale to the neighbours of new construction sites? At the moment, there is too little other than disruption for the neighbours. In Farndon Fields in my constituency, a developer refused to route construction traffic through neighbouring fields and has instead insisted, using the viability argument, on forcing them down tiny suburban streets. My constituents now have to put up with huge HGVs going down these tiny streets where their children are playing, for several years. No wonder we oppose so much development, when it happens like that. No wonder we do not build enough homes. We have a system that seems geared to maximise opposition.

The only way to build more homes is to deal with the underlying reasons why we oppose so much development today. Those problems can be fixed, and I know our new, energetic Minister is setting about fixing them with aplomb, but we need to think radically about the way we build and start a new conversation about the balance of renting and owning.

Oral Answers to Questions

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Monday 23rd July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I hope that one of those Ministers, in the course of this away day—which I am sure is a meeting of the utmost importance—will take the time to visit Newcastle University, which is a most admirable institution. They could benefit greatly from a visit. I mean that the Ministers could benefit, as much as the university.

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough) (Con)]

I welcome the Government’s commitment to a fair funding formula, and I thank the Minister for meeting me and representatives of Leicestershire County Council. Will he confirm that the review that is under way will look at the balance of funding between districts and counties? After all, it is the counties that are bearing the burden of a growing older population and the growing burdens on children’s social services.

[Rishi Sunak]

I can confirm that I have met representatives of my hon. Friend’s council regularly to discuss this topic, including just the other week at the local government conference. We received more than 300 submissions to the recent consultation on fair funding. That is one of the topics raised, and the Department is considering all responses with a view to replying later this year.

Tenant Fees Bill (Second sitting)

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 7th June 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Goodwill]

Indeed, the passporting arrangement that the Opposition mentioned would solve that problem as well. It is interesting to have some statistics behind that. Thank you very much.

[Neil O'Brien (Harborough) (Con)]

Q I have a question for the whole panel. Two days ago, we heard from various landlords’ groups that they did not think that the Bill would lead to net savings for tenants. For complete clarity, could I get a quick answer from each of you on whether you think that the end of lettings fees will lead to benefits to tenants?

Dan Wilson Craw: The Bill will benefit tenants. Yes, we think that.

Rhea Newman: Yes, we do. Is this in relation to potential rent increases? Is that what the question is?

[Neil O'Brien]

Yes, the argument was made that rents would just go up to compensate.

Rhea Newman: We still think the Bill will benefit the majority of private renters, because it will save them money every time they move. In terms of rent increases, we do not expect that all the fees currently charged to tenants will start being charged to landlords, because landlords have the consumer power to shop around and choose the agent that they use, and therefore there will be a competitive pressure on agents to drive down their prices and to offer surpluses at the best value for money.

If we look at the example of Scotland, there is no conclusive evidence that the ban led to a spike in rent increases immediately after it came into force. We conducted some independent research that suggested that there might have been a small short-lived increase in rents, but only one out of 120 landlords had experienced their agents putting up the price and consequently put that on to renters. Similarly, the Office for National Statistics produces an index of rental prices that is now the most authoritative source on rent increases and in the years after the ban, for the first two years, rents increased at roughly the same rate in Scotland and England. Four years later, they had increased much more in England than in Scotland, at 9% to 5%.

[Neil O'Brien]

That is quite the opposite of what we had been told the other day. Katie?

Katie Martin: Overall, we absolutely think that this Bill will benefit tenants, with the changes that we have proposed. If there were to be any rent increases passed on to tenants, which it sounds like there will not be, that would at least be transparent and visible, and that would help to create a competitive market for tenants. So overall, yes.

Izzy Lenga: I was going to echo the point about what happened in Scotland. When the Scottish Parliament banned those fees there was not that much of a spike in an equivalent rise in rent. I also echo the point that ensuring that the guidance is clearer, more transparent and provides a lot more clarity will be really beneficial for students, especially in learning how to manage to budget. As I have mentioned a few times, students can really struggle with money. Clear and more transparent guidance about where their money is going, and when and what they need to pay, will really help students in general.

[Neil O'Brien]

Q If it is okay, Mr Bone, I have a question specifically for Rhea. You just made an interesting point about reasonable charges. I can see your argument that tenants are not able to claim the costs of getting in touch with their landlords, but on the other hand, as you were speaking I was struck by the thought that if it does take months of work, legal effort and endless emails to enforce something, I am not sure how a clause about “reasonableness” would be interpreted. On the face of it, charging for those kinds of costs might be considered reasonable. Could you perhaps say a little more about your idea? I feel sort of left hanging by what you said.

Rhea Newman: Currently, the Bill limits payments in the event of a default to a landlord’s loss, but it is not clear what could be included in that. For example, replacement keys come up a lot. We think that it is absolutely right that if a tenant loses their key they should pay for it to be replaced, but we think that they should pay the cost of having a new key cut, not necessarily other costs that could be added to that such as time, going to get the new key cut and business lost. To draw a comparison, if you broke a glass in a shop you would be very happy to pay for a replacement glass, but I do not think you would necessarily offer to pay lots of additional things on top of that, which you would consider part of the shop’s business costs.

[Neil O'Brien]

Q Just to push you a little on that, in quite a lot of other industries you do pay for the time. For example, if you get a parking charge you will get charged for all the associated legal stuff if you have bailiffs enforced against you. In lots of other industries you do get charged for the time. I wonder how you see your proposal being interpreted. Would it be for the courts to decide what is reasonable, eventually, or would you want a defined list?

Rhea Newman: In regulations we would like a defined list of the types of fees that can be charged. In terms of what comes down to reasonableness, it might be difficult for that to be set out in regulations. I guess there are already some protections in the Consumer Rights Act around what is considered fair or unfair. I think reasonableness is about what a reasonable person would expect to pay in those circumstances, which is the cost the landlord actually incurs.

It is the combination of the reasonableness with the evidence. The landlord sets out the evidence and shows what the costs are. The tenant can then look at that, potentially get some advice, and challenge it. The problem is that by just saying that it is limited to a landlord’s loss, landlords could try to put lots of extra things in there. We have been asking some of our supporters and staff about things that they are potentially charged for at the end of a tenancy. For replacing items such as a dustpan and brush you could be charged £45 because an initial procurement fee was put on to it as well. That is the kind of thing that we are trying to guard against.

[James Frith (Bury North) (Lab)]

Q This has slightly been touched on, but does Citizens Advice, or anyone else who wants to answer this, have an example of landlords taking the mick when it comes to default fees and incidental fees? We have discussed the loss of keys, but there is some concern about incidental fees, as well as the range of fees that are applied, being increased as an opportunity to recoup some of the earnings that agents or landlords might be losing. Are there any examples of that?

Katie Martin: I am sure our advisers see examples of that every day. I am afraid I do not have any off the top of my head—I do not know whether other panellists do. We know that many tenants are being exploited by landlords. Not all of them—many landlords are totally fair and reasonable, but some are not, and we think that the legislation should prevent those unscrupulous landlords from being able to take advantage of tenants. I do not have examples off the top of my head.

Rhea Newman: I was going to pick up on a point that was made earlier. Garden maintenance could be quite a good example: what is expected of a tenant in terms of maintaining a garden? If you give landlords and agents the potential to do so, some—it is only some—might attempt to write in quite creative things that put unfair expectations on a tenant, and then charge them for not meeting them.

The existing examples we see that we are particularly worried about are the letters to chase late rent as well as emails, phone calls and so on. If they are charged at, say, £60 a time and there is no limit on how often a landlord or agent can send those letters or emails, that might be considered an unfair term in the Consumer Rights Act, but as we have said, it is actually quite difficult for a tenant to challenge that. That is why we think there need to be clear provisions up front about what is chargeable and what is reasonable.

Dan Wilson Craw: We have a couple of examples. We asked our supporters for examples like this and someone was required by their landlord to have their chimney swept once a year even though their fireplace was completely out of action.

There was another whose landlord would not fix a broken extractor fan in the bathroom, so the bathroom got very damp. By the end of the tenancy, one of the cabinets had got water damage, so the landlord tried to claim for that. The tenant successfully argued that that was the landlord’s fault because of the extractor fan, and he was awarded his deposit back. But the point a lot of our supporters made was that in these cases they knew their rights and knew that they were in the right, but they felt that a lot of tenants in a similar situation would not have the confidence to take on the landlord, or perhaps could not have a deposit just held in escrow for months on end while that gets resolved.

Katie Martin: In terms of transparency, it is required that any of these incidental fees default fields are written into the contract, but we know from our research that a quarter of tenants receive their contract on the day they are moving. So they have already paid the deposit and committed without having seen the contract. We think that is far too late for those things to be made clear to them.

Rhea Newman: It is also potentially very difficult to identify charges in a contract, depending on how they are written in, and it is very difficult to negotiate. That is a really good point about when you receive the contract, but even if you received it earlier, if you want a particular property and you know that queues of tenants are trying to get it, you are in a very weak bargaining position.