Renters (Reform) Bill

Anthony Mangnall Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 23rd October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

Listening to this debate, I am surprised that we are being accused of dither and delay when 13 years of Labour government never produced a Bill such as this. However, that is for Labour Members to discuss and to wrestle with on their own terms.

I welcome the Bill and support its sentiment, but, as with all pieces of legislation that pass through this place, the devil is in the detail. The Minister and the Secretary of State have a trifecta on their hands. They must reassure Members in this place and in the House of Lords; reassure tenants; and reassure landlords, because, at the moment, I am not entirely sure that we are there. Just as not all tenants are bad tenants, not all landlords are bad landlords. We must make sure that what we provide in the Bill today, in Committee and on Third Reading will reassure both tenants and landlords and take them with us. As many Members have said, it is a balancing act of ensuring the rights of property ownership along with the rights of good, firm tenancies.

I have three areas on which to focus my remarks. The first is the removal of fixed terms—following the brilliant speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle (Mary Robinson), I shall also mention the unforeseen consequences, which she talked about. Perhaps I can give an example. My constituency has one of the largest second home and Airbnb markets in the country. Under the Government’s proposal that tenants will be able to hand back a tenancy with a minimum of two months’ notice, someone could come down, pretend that they are going to rent a house on the long-term rental market, go there for June, July and August, and then hand back the tenancy. With this clause, we would completely obliterate the long-term rental market because people would take advantage of it as a short-term letting market and then hand the property back.

The disparity in prices between the short-term let market and the long-term let market is unbelievably significant in south Devon. I hope that the Minister can reassure me on that point, because that is exactly what people will do. They will rent a house on the pretence that they will stay in it for a significant period, they will be there for the summer, and then they will give it back. That is what the clause allows. We have to ensure that the unforeseen consequences are addressed.

Unless the Minister can give me some reassurance, I worry deeply about what the long-term rental market will look like. At the moment, across south Devon only 70 homes are available for people to rent. We do not demonise landlords without risk. We need to incentivise people to put their houses into the long-term rental market so that they can provide that social value. That is exactly why the Country Land and Business Association has said that it thinks that the rural private housing sector is set to shrink, with 44% of landlords either selling their property or changing its usage class.

My second point is about court reform. I am distinctly uneasy about voting for a Bill that does not come with enforcement and arbitration measures. We have been here before. It is all very well to give a brilliant speech in this place, and clip it and put it on YouTube or Instagram, but if we do not address the legal mechanisms that are needed to enforce the measures, we do our constituents a disservice. It is part of the process in this place, and it worries me that the Government are suggesting that we vote blindly on a piece of legislation that does not have that enforcement mechanism in it.

As I have said, the devil is in the detail, so perhaps the Minister could tell us what the timeline will be for the full creation of the court system or arbitration system. How quickly will we see judgments come along? How will we look to expand the wording on antisocial behaviour, and what will the actual terminology be? When considering a Bill a few years ago, we had a very vague term for the acceptable level of noise. The people who had to enforce that were the police.

If we do not have specifics in our laws they end up being interpreted, sometimes for the better but more often for the worse. Again, I ask the Government to be clear about their laws and language, so that we can ensure that the Bill is drafted in the right way to help both tenants and landlords. I do not feel that this is particularly party political, or that many people from across the House would disagree with those points; it is about having good law and good legislation, and we are all part of that system.

My third point is about the social value of landlords. Both the shadow Minister and the Secretary of State made exactly the same point: they expressed the value of landlords in the housing mix. We have to remember that, because without landlords out there providing houses, our housing market would be a lot worse off. We therefore also have to ensure that under the rights of property ownership, which this place has protected over the years in many different forms, we are clear about the grounds for eviction. I do not think that it is controversial to ask for evictions on the basis of a breach of contract, persistent late payment or damage to property. We have to be clear about those things.

No Member who has spoken in the debate, which has been broadly co-operative, wants people to be homeless or to live in bad housing, but we have to be absolutely clear about what we are asking of tenants and landlords. We have to provide reassurance and ensure that we are incentivising the long-term rental market. By the way, we could also look at reinstituting section 24 mortgage rate relief, but that may be a debate for another time. We have to ensure that we are not pushing houses back into short-term lets, that we are creating a transparent legal system, and that we are looking after the value of tenants and landlords in equal measure. As I said at the beginning, this framework is welcome, but unfortunately there is more work to be done.