Renters (Reform) Bill

Debate between Anthony Mangnall and Geoffrey Clifton-Brown

Report stage
Wednesday 24th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

In rural areas such as mine where housing is already very expensive, more and more landlords are already deciding that letting their properties out is not worth the candle. They will therefore sell them, and the effect will be that there are fewer and fewer properties to rent. Those that are available will therefore go up and up in price and our youngsters will struggle to get on to the rental ladder.

[Anthony Mangnall]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that point. It is one that I will come on to, in terms of both the impact that the Bill will have on the attractiveness of short-term lets and the bureaucracy and hassle that will arise from this legislation.

From the outset of the Bill’s arrival in Parliament, I have worked to ensure that it strikes the right balance between tenant and landlord—a balance that ensures that the rights of tenants are respected and enshrined in legislation while the rights of landlords, property ownership and contract law are maintained and safeguarded. I believe that a failure to strike that balance would have a disastrous impact on the private rental market in the United Kingdom. Complicating the rental market with onerous requests, bureaucratic measures, additional costs and an inability for people to operate their personal property as they wish would only result in large swathes of the private rented sector throwing up their hands and selling their properties, just as a failure to support tenants would only embolden rogue landlords, diminish standards and increase unfair treatment.

From the start, it has been my mission to find a level playing field that ensures that tenants and landlords can co-operate together in a fair market that has a healthy supply of rental properties, with rights and standards enshrined, costs low and bureaucracy minimal, in a system that respects the rule of law and, perhaps most importantly, has a structure and a court system that is effective and that delivers. All of this has been done because we are in the midst of a supply crisis in the private rented sector, on which we have yet to touch.

On average, 25 prospective tenants inquire about every available rental property, up from eight in 2019, according to Rightmove. Hamptons estimates that between 2016 and the end of 2023, individual landlords sold almost 300,000 more homes than they bought. Last year, the Bank of England warned that demand for rental properties continued to outstrip supply as the number of landlords choosing to exit the market increased. It is therefore vital that responsible landlords have confidence that pragmatic changes are being made to the Bill. Failure to do so would only deepen the crisis.

I have said previously that the failure to have a sensible rental period at the start of a tenancy would likely result in the flourishing of long-term rental properties being used as short-term lets. Given the substantial price difference between short-term lets and long-term lets in constituencies like mine and the constituencies of the hon. Members for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) and for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), there would be a very real likelihood of people exploiting that loophole.

Landlords incur costs and expenses when entering into a tenancy, and they need the certainty of a minimum period. Many buy-to-let mortgage lenders also require a minimum six-month tenancy agreement when lending to residential landlords. As a result, I tabled amendment 6 with the support of 58 colleagues to ensure that tenants cannot give two months’ notice to leave a property until they have resided in it for four months. I believe that this is in line with the recommendations of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee. I therefore welcome that the Government have accepted this argument and tabled new clause 15, which mirrors amendment 6. I will therefore not press my amendment.