Renters (Reform) Bill

Ben Everitt Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 23rd October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Ben Everitt (Milton Keynes North) (Con)]

This is without doubt a significant Bill, which shows that the Conservative Government are serious about delivering our manifesto commitments and delivering for the British people. In my constituency, tackling homelessness and rough sleeping is a key priority. To make in-roads, we must reform the private rental market. Many of my constituents and people across the country are trapped in high rental spirals, with little or no other viable options available to them. On that basis, the Bill’s proposal to enable tenants to appeal excessive market rents designed to force out tenants could be an important step, but we need to ensure we see more detail on how that would work in practice.

On top of that, and more broadly, we must go back to these proposals and make sure that they do not let up on the delivery of more affordable housing and social housing. The Housing Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean) has heard me say that time and again. I believe there is a consensus across the House on that point. As the Bill progresses, I will be keeping a strong look-out for the appropriate protections for renters, but we cannot forget that without landlords, we would not have a rental market at all. That is why we need to strike the right balance between assurances for landlords and protections for renters. The tendency to vilify landlords is not just unhelpful to our public discourse; it is unhelpful to how we are developing legislation. We must make sure that we look after landlords in this process; they form a critical part of the housing ecosystem, and scaring them off would set us back even further, so we must tread carefully.

Through my role as chairman of the all-party parliamentary group for housing market and housing delivery, and from meeting landlords and tenants in my constituency, I have engaged with a huge range of stakeholders, including professional landlords such as Grainger and charities such as Shelter. Through those discussions, I am aware of the sticking points that we need to resolve as we progress this Bill through its remaining stages.

To get into just one of the details—I know we are pushed for time—Grainger and others in the industry favour the idea of introducing the ability for landlords to request a six-month minimum tenancy length. Once that period is over, renters could issue a two-month notice. Responsible landlords such as Grainger—and many others; in fact, the vast majority of them—want to build communities and have lasting bonds with the people they house, which is an often forgotten point in these debates. Conversely, charities that I have been talking to that fight for the side of tenants and renters, such as Shelter, want to see a longer protected period for tenants, with a focus on open-ended tendencies. They want to see the protected period lengthened from six months to two years to give renters more certainty and security. In the light of proposals to introduce comprehensive possession grounds for landlords, we need to be careful that we find a compromise between the two positions.

The reforms proposed in the Bill are promising, and I think we can all accept that they are a step in the right direction. However, there is more work to be done in finding the right balance between the needs of renters and landlords and successfully integrating the rental market with our levelling-up plans and the need to deliver more affordable housing across our country.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I call Feryal Clark—not here. That is a shock.