Private Landlords and Letting and Managing Agents (Regulation) Bill

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Friday 25th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is being very open about his own dealings. Does not the fact that he, by accident, has ended up as a private landlord constitute good evidence of the need for regulation?

[Philip Davies]

It does not surprise me that the hon. Gentleman has drawn that conclusion, but I, as a Conservative, have drawn the opposite conclusion, and I hope to explain why at some point in my speech.

I must apologise to you, Mr. Speaker, to the hon. Member for Mansfield (Sir Alan Meale), and to the Minister, the shadow Minister, and all other Members who will participate in the debate. I am afraid that I may have to leave early. I have no idea how long the debate will last, and I may well be here for its entirety, but it is equally possible that I shall not. I am hosting a lunch in one of the Dining Rooms. If I do have to leave before the end of the debate, no discourtesy is intended.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Mansfield on presenting the Bill. As he knows, I am a great admirer of his: in fact, I might even be so bold as to consider him a friend of mine. He may not see it in those terms, but I certainly do. He is a good man, and he has a long track record of bringing important issues to the House and representing his constituents in Mansfield to great effect. I have absolutely no doubt about the sincerity of his case, and I commend him for that. We tend to agree on matters relating to horse racing, and perhaps we would have been better off sticking to that subject today—we could have secured cross-party agreement—but the hon. Gentleman knows as well as I do that when we leave the subject of horse racing our views tend to diverge, quite widely on occasion, and this, I am afraid, is one of those occasions. He will also know, however, that my opposition to the Bill is not directed at him personally, and that my admiration for him has not been diminished by the fact that I happen to disagree with him on this issue.

One problem has, I think, affected us all. I know that the Procedure Committee is considering making changes to the private Member’s Bill system—most of which are not desirable in my book—but, as far as I am aware, this Bill was printed only yesterday. It has been very difficult for some of us to understand all its complexities, given that we have been allowed such a short period before being invited to analyse and scrutinise it, although I am sure that if I have misunderstood any aspects of it, the hon. Member for Mansfield will pull me up. Moreover, I am not aware of the existence of any explanatory notes. The hon. Gentleman may say that none are needed because the Bill is self-explanatory, but I feel that some explanation of the Estate Agents Act 1979, and other related legislation covered by the Bill, might have helped. It might be handy in future for Bills to be accompanied by some form of briefing for Members to read beforehand. That would enable us to know exactly where we stood.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, and we look forward to hearing from the Minister where the Government stand on all this—which side of the fence they are on, and whether they merely wish to maintain the status quo.

I should say that I welcome the Minister to his position—it was a terrible oversight that I did not do so at the start of my speech. We congratulate him and we all have extremely high hopes for him. He might not be on my particular wing of the coalition but he is a good man and we have not given up hope in him yet. We hope he is going to prove his mettle today with a robust libertarian speech—we can but hope. [Interruption.] He says “liberal” but in my experience the Liberal Democrats is one of the most illiberal parties in Parliament. We have high hopes that he will prove us wrong today, however. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) is right, and I hope the Minister will be able to offer him some comfort.

Professor Ball also made the point that much simplification could be achieved without legislation through the encouragement of common and overlapping positive practices among local authorities and through the setting up of websites dedicated to simplifying the burden of compliance, and that improving the performance of regulatory agents in achieving commonly agreed goals is as important as less bureaucracy.

As Professor Ball makes clear, therefore, an awful lot can be done to improve what we have in place at the moment. When regulation that is in place fails, the conclusion that many draw, particularly on the other side of the House, is that more regulation is needed. Actually, when regulation has been introduced and it has failed, that is an argument against more regulation, and it offers up the possibility that we should be doing something different.

The Select Committee report also states:

“The first step towards promoting awareness and understanding”

of the rights and responsibilities of parties in the private rented sector

“must be to have in place a clear and easy-to-understand regulatory framework…Professor Martin Partington, a former Law Commissioner, stated that housing law was ‘but one example of many policies being developed over decades, being implemented through myriad legislative enactments, leaving a mass of often unnecessary, certainly over complex legislation that does not work efficiently’.

The complexity of the regulation led some of those providing evidence to call for a simplification of the law.”

That evidence from a variety of sources is pretty striking, yet this Bill seeks to go in exactly the opposite direction. It proposes more laws and regulation, which will only make the problems that the Select Committee identified even worse.

I do not know about the hon. Member for Mansfield—or you, Mr Speaker—but the people with housing concerns who come to my surgery rarely complain about the private rented sector. Almost everybody who comes to my advice surgery to complain about housing is complaining —time after time—about social housing providers. In terms of the experience of tenants, that is where the biggest problem lies.

[Mr Slaughter]

I think the hon. Gentleman should get out more in his constituency. I am sure it has a private rented sector, although it may not be as big as in some London constituencies, and the conditions in that sector are far worse than in the social housing sector. I suspect that if he does not get complaints, it is because people think they can get redress through him if not directly through their social landlords, whereas those with private landlords are often banging on a closed door.

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s advice, but I am not entirely sure when he became such an expert on the Shipley constituency. Perhaps he is spending more time there than in his own constituency because he seems to know what the issues are in my constituency better than I do, and I will have a chat with him in the Tea Room later to seek his advice about what the people of Shipley, Bingley, Baildon and other nearby villages have been telling him.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is right; I do not disagree with anything that he said. The point I was making is that the hon. Member for Mansfield is on to something, and there is a potential issue here. I say that only because the issue has arisen, and been raised with me, in my constituency; that is why I am aware that this can be a problem.

[Mr Slaughter]

I am with the hon. Gentleman on this; it is a very common problem. It occurs where, for example, local authority properties have been sold and are then rented out regularly for maximum income. Often there is nuisance; it could be leaks, noise—anything. However, the rent is paid, perhaps by housing benefit. Severe nuisance is caused, and that is because the landlord is a bad landlord—a landlord who is not living up to his obligations. That is exactly the type of landlord the Bill is designed to address.

[Philip Davies]

What the hon. Gentleman says may be right. The issue that flows from that is: what should be done? My hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) is very wise, as ever, in guarding against introducing knee-jerk legislation to deal with what may be a minor issue. I am not suggesting that I know the answer to the problem; I am merely highlighting the fact that I have found this to be an issue in my constituency, so I believe that the hon. Member for Mansfield is on to something. As to whether his Bill is the right vehicle for dealing with it, I have grave doubts about that. It is not a Bill that I could support. I am merely acknowledging, in the spirit of consensus that I hate so much, that on this particular point, his suggestion has something to recommend it.

Regulating is clearly something that Opposition Members are itching to get on with, as we might expect. Only last week, the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) proposed a ten-minute rule Bill

“to provide for the regulation of letting agents; to protect tenants’ deposits; to require the enforcement of environmental and energy-efficiency standards in private-sector rented accommodation; to amend the law on secure tenancies; to provide for fair rent to be applicable to all rented accommodation; to require landlords not to discriminate against people in receipt of state benefits; to require local authorities to establish a private rented sector office; and for connected purposes.”

The Bill proposed by the hon. Member for Mansfield is not quite as bad as the one proposed by the hon. Member for Islington North, as we all might expect. Still, we can see the general direction in which Opposition Members are trying to go.

Then there is the Letting Agents (Competition, Choice and Standards) Bill, which was introduced as a ten-minute rule Bill on 2 July this year by the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey). I think that we should all acknowledge that he is an expert in this field; he was a Housing Minister in the last Government, and he is also the director of my local social housing provider, Incommunities. His Bill was

“to establish a national mandatory licensing scheme for letting and managing agents, with established standards and redress for landlords, tenants and leaseholders, and prohibition of letting and management agent fees; to enable local authorities to administer and enforce the scheme; to require that tenants, landlords and leaseholders have written agreements; and to empower local authorities, either alone or in partnership, to trade as letting and managing agents.”

That is three Bills not just in this Parliament but this year, covering pretty much the same ground, with nuances here and there. They have their differences, but they have one thing in common: they all involve more regulation for the sector.

[Mr Slaughter]

What is wrong with written tenancy agreements? They give certainty; they mean less litigation; they mean that landlords’ and tenants’ rights are clear; and they mean less money for lawyers—and I say that as a housing lawyer. Why would that be an increase in regulation, rather than a way of cutting through bureaucracy and the wasting of money?

[Philip Davies]

The hon. Gentleman has shown the true face of the Labour party. He cannot understand that a requirement on somebody is more legislation and more regulation. He seems to think that requiring someone to do something that they are not currently required to do does not mean more regulation and legislation. Of course it does. I am not aware that anybody has said they think that written agreements are a bad thing. The hon. Gentleman falls into the typical socialist trap of thinking that just because he believes that something is a good idea, we must impose it on everybody, regardless of whether they think that it a good idea and want it. In effect, he thinks that he knows best what everybody should do, and that he should impose his view of the world on absolutely everybody. He is clearly a socialist, so of course he believes that. I am not a socialist, so I do not.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Slaughter]

I have already done so. The point I was making is that tenancy agreements would mean less work for lawyers. Lawyers make money where there is uncertainty. The example of friends who think they can make an oral agreement is exactly the sort of case that often leads to the worst type of litigation because there is no clarity and it is all a matter of interpretation, implied terms and what was said and done at any particular time. A written agreement is a way to clarity and simplicity in these matters. It means less money spent and less time in court. I do not know why the hon. Gentleman cannot see that.

[Philip Davies]

I have the disadvantage in this debate of not being a lawyer. Some people might say that it was an advantage not to be a lawyer in this place, but on this narrow point it may well be a disadvantage. I certainly concede the hon. Gentleman’s expertise in this field, but as a layman, I am not aware that written agreements are always clear or that there is no need for solicitors or lawyers to be involved in anything covered by a written agreement. Virtually every written agreement at some point leads to some kind of confusion and dispute, and the lawyers are there, as ever, to pick up the pieces. I do not accept the hon. Gentleman’s assertion that just because we have a written agreement, we do not need any lawyers to be involved. It is quite the reverse, I often find.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. People who are itching to get on with such regulation ought to bear it in mind that that may have unintended consequences which end up leaving those they are trying to help in a worse position than they would otherwise be in. We should all bear that in mind.

My hon. Friend also hits on a more general point. When regulations and legislation are imposed on landlords, it is the good ones who tend to be penalised. Good landlords seek to do everything that is expected of them and go out of their way to meet all their obligations, no matter how onerous. They are not the ones causing a problem, whereas landlords who do not have the same moral scruples are encouraged to operate outside the law. They have already shown that they are not keen on doing the right thing. Why would they all of a sudden be keen on doing something because the Labour party has insisted that they do it? The world does not work like that. We could end up with tenants being in a far worse position.

[Mr Slaughter]

I want to be sure that I have understood the hon. Gentleman. He is saying that the reason for not imposing terms on landlords is that they might then invent contracts which give less power than statute would give, which would be void in any event because landlords would not be able to derogate in that way. If that is the hon. Gentleman’s best argument, it would probably be better for him to give up now.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I do not doubt the hon. Gentleman’s intention; I just do not see how the Bill would work like that. The problem with the Labour party generally is that it thinks people live their lives in a particular way and that no matter what it throws at them, they will continue to live in exactly the same way and just pay the levies and taxes and burdens that it imposes on them. The real world does not work like that. There is no doubt that if the renting out of property becomes too onerous and too expensive, a considerable number of people will leave the market. They just will not bother being involved in the private rented sector. I can say with some considerable certainty that that will lead not to a reduction in rents in places such as London, but to an increase in rents, because there will be fewer rental properties to go round. That is the great flaw in this socialist ideal of imposing extra regulation and charges on people. People will not stand there and take them. They will change their circumstances so as not to be bogged down by them all. There is absolutely no doubt that if the scenario envisaged by the hon. Gentleman in his Bill were to be put in place, it would lead only to a reduction in the number of private sector landlords. That can only drive up rents, and will probably drive up property prices as well, as those who are involved feel that they can get a better return on their investment. That would be not only what I would call an unintended consequence of what the hon. Gentleman seeks to achieve, but a certainty.

Another point to bear in mind is that landlords come in many guises. Often they own only one property or a small number of them. Sometimes they are accidental landlords, as I am, who either inherited properties or were trying to do something worth while by investing in property for future pension provision. They are not all big commercial landlords making vast amounts of money from renting out their properties.

If we look at efforts to keep the private housing market under control from an historical point of view, we find measures such as the Increase of Rent and Mortgage Interest (War Restrictions) Act 1915, which introduced rent controls that restricted rents to their August 1914 levels to prevent landlords from profiteering during the war years, when demand for housing exceeded supply. Although that was intended as a temporary measure, rent control in general continued to be applied to rental agreements until 1989.

The private rented sector made up nine tenths of the housing stock in 1915, but it had declined to one tenth by 1991. It is important to reflect on the reasons for that decline in the intervening years. I suggest that rent control was one of the factors, because it reduced possible rent returns. My point is that if we introduce a system that delivers a worse return for landlords, they will just not bother letting out their properties and we will end up with less housing provision.

[Mr Slaughter]

Does the hon. Gentleman not think that the growth in owner-occupation, which was a result of rising living standards, the growth in social housing, which guaranteed decent-quality accommodation at affordable rents, and indeed the low standards in parts of the private rented sector might be reasons why the sector became less desirable and declined? I wish I could see the world through his glasses, but I do not think that many people do so.

[Philip Davies]

As it happens, the hon. Gentleman is right. I was going to say that obviously other factors were involved in the decline of the private rented sector. I am not so blind, in my intellectual dogma, that I do not see that other factors were involved, because clearly they were. Rising prosperity and the right to buy, for example, made it easier for people to buy their own homes. My point is that one of those factors was rent control. I suggest that if the hon. Gentleman cannot see past his ideological dogma and realise that rent control was also a factor, he is the one with the problem, not me.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Madam Deputy Speaker. I hope to do so many more times and I congratulate you on your election.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Sir Alan Meale) on an excellent speech and an excellent Bill. I would like to extend the same courtesy to the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Andy Sawford). It is a pleasure to see him in his place. It is the first time I have heard him speak from the Front Bench and I hope to do so many more times, because he made a good speech that explained why this is a good Bill.

I am a rare contributor on Friday mornings, so I have not had the pleasure of hearing the regulars, as it were. With all due respect, the phrase “Never mind the quality, feel the width” comes to mind. I was not greatly persuaded by the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies). I am sorry he has had to leave us and host his luncheon party, but I felt that he simply took the anti-regulation speech off the shelf without any consideration of the Bill. He confessed, either because of the late publication of the Bill or because he did not have the time, that he had not looked at it in detail. If he had done so he would have seen that it is not a great addition to regulatory burden or an impediment imposed on the private rented sector, but a necessary and modest proposal. It would be effective in an area where more effective regulation is needed.

With all due respect to the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), I am not persuaded by his Hobbesian vision of a private sector market where, to avoid Rachmanism, private tenants should sign away their rights and the only way for them to have any sort of protection would be by allowing landlords to evict them on a whim, which is effectively what shorthold tenancies do, without giving any reason. If private tenants insisted on some form of protection or regulation, they would stand in fear of the type of behaviour that Rachman and his ilk got up to in the 1950s—which led to the major expansion of social housing to counter such behaviour.

I look forward to hearing what the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Bristol West (Stephen Williams) has to say. It is a great pleasure to see him on the Front Bench—it is long overdue. He has been given a brief to which he is well suited and I am interested to hear how he will deal with this matter. During a longueur in the speech of the hon. Member for Shipley, I could not help but do a quick Google of the Minister’s views. I came across a video—I advise other hon. Members to watch it—that he made for Shelter. I do not want to embarrass him, but I think it is entirely to his credit. He talks about his own experience of growing up in the private rented sector—his experience of eviction and poor living conditions. He made the video in the context of the “Bristol Rotten Homes” campaign, which was

“calling on the new Mayor of Bristol to take action on poor housing conditions in the private rented sector.”

Shelter stated that

“1 in 5 homes in Bristol are rented out by a private landlord yet over a quarter of these homes do not meet the Decent Homes Standard. That means many renters in Bristol are being forced to live in unsafe and indecent conditions.”

The Minister visited the Bristol Rotten Homes shop, which was a spoof letting agent that was promoting the campaign and providing housing and debt advice.

Going by that, I suspect that the Minister’s experiences and views are rather closer to mine and those of my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield than to the brief that he has been given to read out today. This will be the first test of whether he can stand at the Dispatch Box and read out something with which he disagrees entirely, but I am sure that it will not be the last, as long as the coalition lasts.

If anybody wants to know why further regulation and scrutiny of the private lettings market are needed, they need only watch the BBC programme on racial discrimination in lettings policy that was aired last week. I am sure that some Members saw that programme, but I will describe what happened for those who did not. Having been tipped off, the BBC reporters obtained a flat and purported to let it out through 10 letting agencies in north-west London. They asked each letting agent not to let Afro-Caribbean people view the property or have access to it. Every single letting agent agreed to do that without demur and with enthusiasm. That is not only clearly unlawful, but disreputable.

I would have thought that that behaviour would surprise hon. Members on both sides of the House, given that it is almost 50 years since such discrimination was outlawed. Clause 2 would attack such disgraceful behaviour, but there are more punitive criminal sanctions for it, which I hope will be sought. The fact that such behaviour is, on the evidence of the programme, endemic across private letting agencies should at least give us pause for thought.

I know that the Conservative party—although not the Liberal Democrat party any longer—believes that qualifications in the teaching profession should not be required for a job in a state school. However, in most areas of life where people are at risk or where people seek to gain a benefit, regulation is appropriate. One would not expect lawyers to be unqualified. One would not expect to be able simply to set up and run a business in any professional walk of life without any regard to qualifications. That is not possible for estate agents. I really do not know why it should be possible for private letting agencies.

It is true that the private rented sector declined substantially for most of the last century. It is also true that it has increased massively over the past 10 years. Although I support and believe in a strong private rented sector, most of the reasons for that expansion are not good ones. One reason is the decline of the social housing sector, which is due to fewer properties being built and to properties being sold or demolished. That sector generally provides decent, affordable homes for people on low and middle incomes. Another reason is that owner-occupation, particularly in London but in other parts of the country as well, has become unaffordable in a way that it was not 20 or 30 years ago.

The average rent levels in my constituency are £245 a week for a studio flat, £467 a week for a two-bedroom flat and £770 a week for a three-bedroom house. Those rents are four to five times as much as one would pay in the social housing sector, and yet it is the private rented sector that is expanding and the social housing sector that is contracting. Those prices are unaffordable to most people, even those on several times the average income.

There are also far worse problems with housing conditions in the private rented sector than in any other housing sector, and we know that people are being forced into that sector because there is no alternative. I am afraid I did not recognise the rather rosy view that the hon. Member for North East Somerset took of a free market in which the purchaser has as much discretion and power as the vendor. That is not the private rented market that operates in London. By the Government’s own criteria, some 35% of properties in the private rented sector are described as non-decent.

Conservative Members have made the point that we do not need regulation because there are other ways of obtaining redress. My hon. Friend the Member for Corby answered that point by saying that the cuts in Government spending have removed most of those avenues of redress. The most obvious one to me, although he did not mention it, is legal aid, which is no longer available for most areas of housing law. Many cases such as some that I have litigated—as often for the landlord as for the tenant, so I am not speaking with any vested interest—will not come to court now, simply because a tenant who is living in poor conditions, being discriminated against, not having their repairs done or subject to oppressive behaviour by their landlord can get no advice on their rights. If the state takes away the ability to self-help, it has a greater role to play in enforcing standards in the private rented sector.

[Andy Sawford]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about legal aid changes. Does he also find that his constituency is affected by cuts to citizens advice bureau services, welfare rights advice services and other such organisations that can help local people who are concerned about their rights? Mine certainly is.

[Mr Slaughter]

Of the four main advice agencies in my constituency, two have shut down in the past three years, one of which was a specialist housing advice agency. The others have had their work curtailed by budget cuts. They have either stopped taking new customers or, as in the case of the citizens advice bureau, become so overloaded that they can no longer provide the service that they would wish to provide. That is a real problem.

Conservative Members made the point that the Bill would have an impact on individual private landlords. I have great sympathy with small landlords, who provide opportunities for people and expand the market. Many of them, if not most, are very good, but that does not excuse them from providing proper services and decent conditions for their tenants. If the conditions that the Bill suggests imposing on them were onerous, Conservative Members might have a point, but they are not. One cannot excuse landlords on the basis that they are amateurs or have come into the property market by mistake or happenstance. That is not a reason for failing to ensure that they provide their tenants with decent living conditions. That responsibility must fall on them.

I am afraid that some of the worst landlords I have to deal with are private landlords who acquire a number of properties and deliberately run them to a poor standard. They usually get their referrals through local authorities. I have seen some utterly appalling housing conditions in the past two or three years, of a type that I had not seen for the previous 20 or 30 years. Often, the landlords benefit from a large amount of public money through housing benefit. The state has a legitimate interest in ensuring that it gets value for money.

I believe in a strong private rented sector, but a more professional one in which there is more investment by pension funds and larger organisations that have the capacity and management skills needed to provide longer-term tenancies and fairer rents. Such organisations could perhaps also manage with a lower turnover of people and with finance received over a longer period. As we have seen from the endorsements to proposals in the Bill by some of the more respectable landlord organisations, that would encourage a virtuous spiral in the private rented sector, rather than what we have at the moment, which is a free-for-all and downward spiral. It is a sellers’ market—particularly in London, but I am sure elsewhere too—and on that basis tenants have little choice and people are living in the sorts of conditions described by my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield. It is appalling.

About one third of those in private rented accommodation are families with children. If one reads the Evening Standard or listens to the media, one would think we are talking simply about “generation rent” and young professionals who are waiting to get on the housing ladder and who are forced into private rented accommodation while they wait. That may be right—they are certainly an important group and more should be done to enable people to get into home ownership—but increasingly we are going back to those Rachmanesque days in which vulnerable people are forced to live in those conditions. Part of that involves the relationship between social housing and the private rented sector and it is now possible—this is an intended, rather than an unintended consequence of the Government’s attack on social rent—for a local authority permanently to discharge its obligation towards homeless families to the private rented sector. That means that vulnerable people are put into the hands of what are often very poor private landlords.

Even before one gets to that stage, because of the shortage of social housing many families are in temporary private rented accommodation for up to 10 years. I will give one example from my surgery from the past two weeks. A family of six who had been in overcrowded, private rented temporary accommodation for 10 years, were finally—very unusually in Hammersmith—made an offer of a permanent two-bedroom flat. That was clearly inadequate for six people, so they had to refuse it and therefore lose their right to housing. In the end—there is still an obligation—the family were told, “Yes, we will find you a property with four bedrooms in the private rented sector for £500 a week”. That four-bedroom property turned out to be a two-bedroom council flat that had been purchased and converted by the technique of putting a piece of plywood over the bath and making the bathroom into a bedroom, making the store cupboard into a bathroom, the kitchen into a bedroom, and putting the kitchen in the lounge. It was effectively a two-bedroom property for a family of six. That is anecdotal, but it is typical of the type of problems I see in my surgery every week. I have had hundreds, if not thousands, of such cases.

As local authorities have a shortage of social accommodation to let—in my local authority there is a deliberate policy of demolishing and selling off social housing—they are forced more and more to rely on substandard private rented accommodation. Owing to the benefit cap, the only type of accommodation likely to be available in London will be of very low quality; alternatively, it will be a long way outside London.

We have a responsibility to private tenants, particularly if they are vulnerable, such as the elderly or those with disabilities, and that responsibility is not being discharged. I will not go through the Bill clause by clause as other Members have done, but if the hon. Member for North East Somerset looks at it again, he will see that when the rhetoric is put aside, the measures proposed are straightforward and pragmatic. Greater regulation is undoubtedly needed in the sector.

Greater transparency is needed, too. I do not recognise this picture of the all-knowing tenant going into the letting agency and quizzing the agent carefully on the fee and charging issues. It is perfectly clear that many agencies—not just the rogue ones; I am afraid that this is almost the norm so far as letting agencies are concerned—are not transparent. I have heard complaints about some of the blue-chip letting agencies—I shall not name them here—that let out some of the most expensive properties in London and take every possible opportunity to extort money from their tenants.

That applies right through the tenancy from the time that the tenant first signs up to the time of leaving it. First asked for money as a deposit or for rent in advance, the tenant will then be asked to pay administration fees, holding fees, fees for renewal and finally fees on leaving. The tenant is over a barrel and not in a position to escape. If a tenant is in need of housing and there is only one agency that will accept him or offer something within his price range, there is little choice. In those circumstances, it is all very well saying “caveat emptor”; a wide choice does not apply. The landlord has the whip hand on every occasion. If measures can be brought in, not necessarily to regulate but to make the fees transparent, and if we can have greater scrutiny of the worst type of landlords such as those exposed by the BBC, that would be worth while.

Written tenancy agreements are standard agreements these days. It is possible to provide one’s own, but 99% of landlords will take out an assured shorthold tenancy agreement. Everybody will know what that is. Of course disputes can arise over written contracts—that can be taken as a given—but difficulties and confusion are far more likely if the terms of a tenancy are not clear. If it is an oral tenancy, we can bet our lives that the terms are not going to be clear.

We know that local authorities are under pressure, and nobody wants to put more pressure on them at this time. I think the scheme in the Bill is effectively the beginning of self-regulation. It asks good landlords to identify themselves and allows bad landlords and bad letting agents to be identified so that they can be dealt with in a way that prevents them from abusing their tenants any longer, as some of them have done for week after week.

I shall end my comments there. I do not want to delay the Bill’s Second Reading, but I suspect that other Members may well have that in mind. My hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield has done us a great service in bringing this Bill forward and in identifying what has often been a neglected area of public policy. Frankly, it has been neglected not just recently, but over 30 years or more. People are suffering silently. It is naive of the hon. Member for Shipley to say, “I do not get these people flooding into my surgery”, because people often do not know their rights. They may be transient tenants, migrant labourers or families who simply do not know what to do. They are prey all the time to poor landlord practices and are exploited by letting agencies on the way there. If we can do something, even through these modest proposals, to address that, it should be viewed as an obligation. I await the Minister’s speech to see whether my speech has persuaded him to throw his brief away and say what we know he probably feels.