Tenancies (Reform) Bill

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Friday 28th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

The hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Stephen Gilbert) expressed the hope that the Bill will receive support from both sides of the House and that we will put aside partisan politics. I think that those who know my relationship with the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather) will understand that the fact that I am here supporting a Bill that she has brought forward is extreme testimony to that. But it is the merits of the Bill that I am here to support.

I want to read out a letter from a landlord in my constituency who wrote to me about his concerns about the Bill. I do not know whether he is a good landlord or a rogue one, but these are the sentences he used to express his concerns:

“Surely anyone with an ounce of common sense must know if you are going to give a Tenant a five year contract up front they are not going to behave, respect the Property or be a good Tenant, and if you get struck with the bad one it’s a five year problem. All he needs to do is damage your property, run along to the Council and complain about the damage, and the landlord won’t be able to use section 21. This is utter nonsense of a Bill.”

I disagree with that, but I am confident that many of the remarks that will be made later on in an attempt to talk out the Bill will sound similar. The letter expresses pithily the fundamental worries that landlords, including good landlords, have, because there is abuse not only by landlords, but by tenants. The Bill has its best chance of success because that has been taken on board, while recognising that there has to be greater equity of power between the landlord and the tenant. At the moment, the balance of power is clearly in the landlord’s favour, and many tenants are suffering as a result.

One of those tenants is my constituent Mr P, who has been subjected to ongoing leaks and regular ceiling collapses for the past nine years. He is not one of the short-term, complaining tenants that the landlord who wrote to me was referring to, because he has been in the property for nine years. The first collapse occurred eight years ago and produced 20 kg of debris. Most recently, the ceiling gave way in two places, missing my constituent by only a few feet. The landlord is fully aware of the state of the property, but he appears to be very reluctant to carry out repair work.

On two previous occasions, the landlord initiated eviction proceedings against my constituent after he complained about his living conditions. However, I am told that the notices were withdrawn when my constituent threatened to involve Brent council’s private housing services. I want to mention Brent private tenants rights group, which is a wonderful organisation, and Jacky Peacock, who is known not only to the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), from his time as council leader—he is nodding in his place—but to my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) and the hon. Member for Brent Central. Jacky has been sticking up for private tenants in the Brent, Harrow and Ealing areas for many years, and she is wonderful. I understand that on both occasions Mr P’s landlord agreed to undertake the repair work on the condition that he accepted rent increases. Those rent increases were imposed, but the repair work was not subsequently carried out.

The landlord whose letter I read out earlier feared that all the tenant needed to do was damage the property and make a complaint, and then section 21 could not be enforced. That is not correct. It is important that Members who support the Bill make it clear that that is not possible. He refers in another part of his letter to the many ways in which the local authority can already get involved. In fact, on 9 April this year, Mr P received a fresh notice to quit, and on that occasion he was rather surprised, because he had not made any recent complaints about the property. He realised that the notice to quit was triggered by the enforcement action that Brent council is now planning to take with regard to the property. Of course, if an officer from the council’s private housing service is to visit and make an assessment, it is a requirement that the landlord be notified of an impending visit and assessment. Otherwise, any enforcement decision cannot be taken against the landlord. It is really important that the hon. Member for Brent Central has incorporated into the Bill a reasonableness clause and a reasonableness agenda, because that gives succour to good landlords, reassuring them that they will not be subject to frivolous, vexatious or aggressive action on behalf of tenants. In my dealings with tenants in Brent over the past 17 and a half years, I have come across fewer than 20 vexatious tenants in that entire period. As for the number of retaliatory evictions—we are probably dealing with 20 such ongoing cases in my office at present. The balance is clearly out of kilter and needs to be rectified.

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

I, too, may be divided politically from the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather), but I am entirely united with her on this occasion. Does my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) agree that if a landlord were a vendor and the tenant were a purchaser—a consumer—the existing consumer protection legislation would provide that equity? Why do we have such a fundamental imbalance? Section 21, which was supposed to be a sensible measure, is a great threatening blunderbuss before which many of our tenants, our constituents and our friends and some of our family have to cower. Why this imbalance?

[Barry Gardiner]

My hon. Friend is right. There is a huge imbalance, part of which the Bill seeks to address. I welcome that. The imbalance exists because power and money usually side together, and that is what we need to pull apart by ensuring that the Bill progresses.

I have a number of other cases which highlight the problem of retaliatory evictions. One tenant had lived in the property for 11 years amid lots of disrepair, the possession order coming once a complaint had been made. I shall not detain the House with further cases because I want to see the Bill progress. It is good, but it is limited. The hon. Member for Brent Central will know that in the House of Lords on 5 November my party introduced an amendment on retaliatory eviction to the Consumer Rights Bill. Hansard records who supported that amendment.

My party has also set out plans for a much more fundamental reform of the private sector because of the need to get a fairer deal for those who are renting and to remedy the imbalance identified by most Members who have spoken in the debate. I would very much like to present more cases, but I do not believe that for some of those who will follow me in this debate, more cases will be more persuasive. We need to let them make their remarks and let the House move to a conclusion.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Williams]

These are detailed points and reasonable concerns about the effects of the Bill. That is why the Government’s position is that we support the Second Reading of the Bill so that such points can be teased out in Committee. As the hon. Member for Harrow East also said, that is one issue that will need to be tested.

[Barry Gardiner]

The Minister has indicated that the Government support the Bill, so will he explain why on 24 November the coalition Government voted against an amendment to the Consumer Rights Bill on this exact point?

[Stephen Williams]

We are trying to be consensual today to get this Bill through. I think the hon. Gentleman knows very well that this Bill was already known about. It is promoted and supported by the cross-section of charities referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central. Today is her opportunity to introduce the Bill and for the Government to respond to a substantive debate on it. That is why it was said in another place that the amendment tabled by the Opposition was not necessary, as we would have the opportunity to deal with the matter today. That is what we are now doing.

The Bill is necessary. The Government are very clear that retaliatory eviction is wrong and that its continued practice is unacceptable. No tenant should face eviction because they have made a legitimate complaint about the condition of their home to the landlord. No decent landlord—decent landlords have been referred to, in particular by my hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh— would engage in or condone that practice. However, there are a small number of rogue and unscrupulous landlords who think it is perfectly acceptable to evict a tenant for requesting a repair.

The hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) asked for evidence and here it is. An extrapolation from a YouGov survey of more than 4,500 private renters carried out earlier this year found that 480,000 tenants had either not asked for a repair to be carried out or had not challenged a rent increase because they were concerned about being evicted. Some 80,000 tenants had actually been evicted because they had asked for a repair to be carried out. Many of those tenants will have children and partners, so we estimate that about 213,000 people are actually affected by retaliatory eviction every year. There may be 213,000 people affected by the issue we are discussing today.

It has been suggested—I suspect it will shortly be suggested again, but at great length—that there is no need for the Bill because existing consumer protection legislation is adequate. The view of the Government is that that is not correct. The existing law does not provide tenants with sufficient protection against retaliatory eviction. The application of existing consumer legislation to landlord and tenant issues is not clear. The existing consumer law enforcement regime is not specifically geared up to deal with landlord and tenant issues, but applies to traders who offer a wide range of goods and services.

It would be difficult for a tenant to prove that a landlord had acted illegally under consumer law by serving a section 21 notice in retaliation for a complaint. Threatening a tenant with eviction could potentially be considered an aggressive commercial practice, but it is difficult to see how serving a notice that a landlord is contractually and statutorily entitled to serve would be found to be an illegal act. Under section 21, the landlord does not need to give a reason to evict tenants.

Engaging in unfair or aggressive commercial practices is a criminal offence for which a prosecution or other enforcement action can be brought by trading standards officers. We consider that the law needs to be changed to introduce provisions specifically designed to target retaliatory eviction, which will make it clear that where a local authority has issued a statutory notice in relation to a health and safety hazard in the property, the existing restrictions on the use of section 21 notices should be extended to cover those circumstances.

It has also been suggested—I suspect we will hear more about this shortly—that the introduction of the Bill will jeopardise the private rental sector. There are already some restrictions on the use of section 21 notices. Landlords cannot serve a section 21 notice where they have failed to put their tenant’s deposit in a Government-approved tenancy deposit scheme, or where they have not obtained a licence for a property that should be licensed. There are therefore already some restrictions on section 21 and the private rental sector has expanded none the less.

I will briefly cover the four main areas of the Bill. First, there is protection from retaliatory eviction where a tenant requests a repair be carried out and the local authority confirms that that repair is necessary. It cannot be a vexatious raising of a spurious point—the local authority would have to confirm that the repair was necessary. If that is the case, the landlord will be prevented from evicting that tenant for a period of six months. Under existing legislation the landlord will also be required to ensure that the repairs are completed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

I am tempted to go into the world of how the Liberal Democrats can sit on the fence and be on both sides of an argument at the same time, but I am not going to do that. I am just going to say that quite a lot of Members come to the House and never vote for or against a closure motion; they sit on their hands. Normally, however, if a Member is going to try to get what is known to be a controversial Bill—[Interruption.] Hon. Members are laughing, but the Bill is obviously controversial because until only a few weeks ago, the Government themselves were against it and they have opposed a similar measure in the House of Lords.

[Barry Gardiner]

The hon. Gentleman has to reflect on the fact that no one was prepared to go through the Lobby against the closure motion. If he is as confident in his position as he claims to be—it is clear what he is trying to do; he is trying to talk until 2.30, when the motion will fall—why does he not agree now to put the substantive matter to the vote?