Tenant Fees Bill

Alex Chalk Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 21st May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Lewer (Northampton South) (Con)]

Although it is true that some renters pay many hundreds of pounds in fees to letting agents, I want to point out that the solution proposed by the Government may merely shift the cost of the burden, not to landlords and lettings agents, but back to tenants in a different way. Banning letting agency fees means that the money will have to come from somewhere else, at least as far as legitimate services from respectable letting agents are concerned. Landlords may well be forced to, or at least will, increase rents across the tenancy to cover the costs anyway.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that however appropriate this legislation is—and it is appropriate—it is at least in part because of the unscrupulous actions of some letting agents, and not all letting agents should be tarred with the same brush? CGT Lettings and Morgan Associates in my constituency do a good job by their tenants and can be expected to continue to do so.

[Andrew Lewer]

I entirely agree.

These new rules are quite complex and there will be a bureaucratic cost to councils, letting agents, landlords and therefore tenants. The rules trigger the new burdens doctrine, and I hope that this will be accounted for in the legislation. I still think that a simple rule allowing letting agents to impose a maximum fee of 100% or 150% of monthly rent might have solved this more straightforwardly, as long as there were additional safeguards for those receiving housing-related benefits and others.

As I said last week on housing and, before that, on the energy price cap, I am a critical friend and a supporter, rather than a member, of this Conservative Government. Although I accept the need to intervene at times to ensure that fairness is maintained in the market, we also have a strong commitment to providing more houses and making people’s lives easier. The focus needs to be the key objective of having new homes in which the private rented sector will have a role, rather than just the “ban and regulate” type of legislation. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) has just said, let us remember that there are hard-working people in the sector. We should not draft legislation purely to punish those who behave unscrupulously at the expense of the far more numerous examples in the former category.

I would like to acknowledge the work of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, on which I sit. Over the past few months, it has held evidence sessions with stakeholders and done significant work to improve this Bill so as to avoid more costly and inefficient enforcement. Indeed, that work has been sufficient, notwithstanding my reservations, to secure my support in the Lobby, because there is a problem to be tackled, even if this proposal has some Jim Hacker in it as well as some King Solomon.