Renters (Reform) Bill (Fifth sitting)

Debate between Siobhain McDonagh and Karen Buck

Committee stage
Tuesday 21st November 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

I rise briefly to reinforce the key points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich. The hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster and I share in our borough what I think is the largest private rental market in the country, so these issues are of particular concern to us. I am sure that she, like me, deals with consequences of section 21 evictions constantly.

We are all pleased to be here finally to recognise the principle that the section 21 evictions will end. However, I must also echo the concerns about the practice being dependent on a Government decision that in itself rests on agreement on court reform. That, as we heard in evidence last week, is unspecified and imprecise, which allows for the possibility that it will be some time before tenants see the benefits.

My hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich was asked in an intervention how many households had lost their homes since the Government introduced the principle of the Bill. The answer to that is 23,000 households since the commitment to the principle in the Bill. Even more worryingly, if the provisions of the Bill do not come into effect until the end of 2024, we are likely to see an additional 35,000 households losing their homes.

The consequences of losing a home are catastrophic for families. Many of us rented when we were younger, when we were students or young professionals, and moving frequently is a hazard of young life, but the private rented sector has been transformed in recent decades; it is now a home to families with children in a way that it simply was not a couple of decades ago. Therefore, the consequences for those families are at a level of disruption that is quite different, in particular in the impact on young people’s education.

One of the aspects that I deal with a lot, and that causes me great concern, is the number of uprooted families who have education and care plans. Children might be in the middle of special needs education—in particular, vulnerable children with autism or various disabilities—but they are uprooted and moved to different boroughs. That is also at considerable public expense, let alone the damaging consequences for the children.

We also have a growing number of older renters. Again, that was very rare a few decades ago. Those people have put down roots over decades.

[Siobhain McDonagh]

Has my hon. Friend had the same experience that I have had? I see an ever-growing number of constituents over 60 who face section 21 eviction. In the 26 years that I have been the MP for Mitcham and Morden and in the previous 18 years that I was a councillor, or when I worked for Wandsworth local authority or the Battersea Churches Housing Trust, I have never seen that. It is a very new development.

[Ms Buck]

I very much agree. That is a new development, and it is extremely worrying and damaging to people’s quality of life.

The whole area of enforced mobility and frequent moves is an under-researched area of social policy, but it has massive implications. There is unfortunately far too little quality research, but from anecdotal evidence we know the negative impacts that frequent moves have on children’s education—I mentioned special needs, but there is an impact on children’s educational opportunities generally. I and, I am sure, other Members who represent areas with large renting populations have heard of children being uprooted in the weeks before they take public examinations, and being forced to commute to their schools, sometimes travelling an hour or more each way. We know that this is bad for educational prospects, we know it is bad for health, and we know that it correlates with low birth rates, infant mortality and serious mental health consequences.

[Siobhain McDonagh]

The guidance code on dealing with homeless families suggests that priority for local temporary accommodation should be given to children in their exam years. That is a great aspiration, but it is not being realised on the ground because local authorities cannot find accommodation, particularly for larger families.

Renters (Reform) Bill (Sixth sitting)

Debate between Siobhain McDonagh and Karen Buck

Committee stage
Tuesday 21st November 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Ms Buck]

Once again, the Government are falling into the trap of creating a system that will create problems for itself, because they refuse to accept the sheer complexity of real people’s lives. Making these grounds mandatory will prevent the courts from doing what they are so good at, which is considering the circumstances that prevail in individual cases. Not only will that inevitably lead to many families and individuals who are struggling with difficult circumstances losing their homes, but it will have a direct impact on local authorities, because this is yet another driver of homelessness and other pressures on local councils. This does not do away with the problem; it moves the problem somewhere else.

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it causes another problem for those families, because hard-pressed councils might find them intentionally homeless? Generally, if someone is evicted for rent arrears, they are found intentionally homeless. Although reference has to be made to particular circumstances, I imagine that a court order with that result would lead to no landlord taking them on and to the council not helping them. There are then families floating around the system, with social services ultimately taking children into care.

[Ms Buck]

I agree with my hon. Friend about all this. In fact, tragically, my office is dealing at the moment with a family where the children have been taken into care as a consequence. These things can indeed happen; we have touched on that occasionally in the passage of this Bill, but I just wish that the Government had not rather short-sightedly removed things like debt advice from the scope of legal aid provision. If we had been able to intervene in many of these cases, we could have prevented these problems from ending up as a crisis. The solution to that is outside this Bill.

I concede that there are undoubtedly some people who persistently fail to pay their rent. That is absolutely the case, and it drives landlords mad—rightly so. I think the rumours of it create a much larger problem than actually exists, but there are people who do it, and it is essential that there are powers for the court to deal with that. The people who are doing that will frequently disappear before the case ever gets to court anyway, and will try their luck not paying their rent with another landlord. We need powers to deal with that, but so many of the people who end up in this situation do so because of a set of very, very difficult circumstances that have thrown them into chaos.

Here are just some of the cases that my office and I have dealt with over the course of a few months. There is the small shopkeeper and private tenant who was burgled; he lost his stock and his income, and it took him a while to sort out the insurance claim, during which time he got into very serious arrears. There is the young father on a zero-hours contract who found himself, several times during the year, expecting to have an income but finding that he was not called into work for two or three weeks at a time. Each time, it caused a set of problems.

The Minister may say that that is what social security and housing benefit are supposed to be for. I do not know whether the Minister has ever tried to claim universal credit or housing benefit on a variable income, with all the documentation that has to be prepared. It is an absolute living hell.

One of the safeguards in the Bill is supposed to be that the ground will not affect people who have a benefit entitlement that has been delayed, which, as we know, reflects a structural problem with universal credit. However, many of the difficult cases involve the entitlement to benefit being disputed in the first place, and that is a whole different ball game.

I had a case not that long ago in which a mother and her three children were days away from an eviction, not because they were deemed not to be entitled to benefit, but simply because after a relationship breakdown the benefit claim had for some reason not been transferred, despite repeated efforts. Over three years, that led to huge arrears. Each time, it was settled, but then the same structural problem occurred yet again, which left the family vulnerable. We were able to sort it out, but the case would not have fallen under the safeguards that the Minister will no doubt claim apply in this case.

--- Later in debate ---

[Siobhain McDonagh]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the groups of people for whom it is most difficult to get housing benefit or universal credit correct is self-employed minicab drivers, because of the difficulties in assessing the costs involved in being self-employed? They regularly get a decision on their benefit claim only to have it change and have money taken back, while they remain on exactly the same income.

[Ms Buck]

I absolutely agree. It is an issue for the self-employed; the very small businesses operating at the margin; the people who, because of the structure of our labour market, dip in and out of employment and have highly variable earnings; and the people who are on zero-hour contracts. It is exactly those people who end up in difficulties. It would be lovely if the system had the competency and level of provision to help those people, but all too often it does not. Many young people and vulnerable people—for instance, after a relationship breakdown or a bereavement—do not know where to go for advice. They try to help themselves and fail to do so.

Ground 8A is both disproportionate to the scale of the problem and unnecessary, because there are powers in the system to deal with rent arrears anyway. It will inevitably lead to further evictions, which will be concentrated among those people who have the biggest problems, who will end up making claims for homelessness support from local authorities.

The Minister does not need to go down this route. As my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich said, if the Government do not want to go all the way to removing the reformed ground 8A, which would be the simplest way, there are layers of protection that could be built into the system. The Minister should trust the courts: that is what they are for. They are good at this, they are experienced at this, and they know how to tell a charlatan from somebody with genuine and complex problems. The measure will place an unnecessary burden on the most vulnerable people, and I genuinely believe that the Minister will have cause to regret its implementation.