Renters' Rights Bill (Fifth sitting)

Debate between Carla Denyer and Sam Carling

Committee stage
Thursday 31st October 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Carla Denyer]

A number of the organisations that gave evidence suggested something along those lines, and they had looked into the viability of both mechanisms existing in parallel. I do not have the exact chapter and verse of what they said in my head; we can look at that in Hansard.

[Sam Carling (North West Cambridgeshire) (Lab)]

On the suggestion made by the hon. Member for Bristol Central, the civil penalty income is imposed by a public body as a punishment for breaking the law. There is a point of principle about whether it is right—whether there is a precedent—to give a contribution back to the tenant from that. It feels very unusual to me.

I have a brief question for the Minister; it may be that as a new Member of Parliament I am not used to this yet. Is it normal to specify the amount of the fine in primary legislation? Can that cause problems later in respect of needing to uprate it with inflation or anything like that?

[Matthew Pennycook]

On the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for North West Cambridgeshire, it is conventional to put the amount of the fine on the face of the Bill. There are provisions in the Bill that allow the Government to increase the fine to reflect the increase in inflation over time, so it is not a static, once-and-for-all £7,000 or £40,000 in the case of criminal offences.

On the point from the hon. Member for Bristol Central, I sympathise very much with the intent. We have to ensure that prospective tenants who face direct or more subtle forms of discrimination take a complaint to the local authority, but I have confidence that tenants will, and I have concerns about the approach she specifies. First, on a point of principle, the penalties are imposed by a public body for breaking the law. They are not a mechanism for compensation. It would be a departure from the norm, as she rightly appreciates.

My primary concern—I think the hon. Lady underestimates it even with the increased fee she proposes —is that there would be a significant impact on local authorities. They will take issue with losing 20% of the fine they can levy. I will check with her local authority after I leave the Committee as to whether they would be happy to lose that.

Renters' Rights Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Carla Denyer and Sam Carling

Committee stage
Tuesday 22nd October 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Sam Carling]

Q It was about the point that quite a lot of students drop out of university, so there is an issue, on the flipside of some of the points you made before, about those students being locked in. Would you agree that this Bill addresses that?

Victoria Tolmie-Loverseed: Yes. I think a lot of landlords release tenants, certainly in the PBSA sector. If somebody leaves university or their circumstances change, I think a lot of landlords release tenants. I think it is right that if somebody leaves university, a landlord should seriously consider releasing them, perhaps with two months’ notice, and letting them leave. I think that would be a very good element of a student tenancy. Unipol is a landlord, and we release tenants if their circumstances have changed. It is a relatively small number of students who require that, but it is difficult. That would undoubtedly be an advantage to the students who need it.

[Carla Denyer]

Q I have a specific question on the new grounds for possession that we were just talking about. I interpreted the wording of the new ground that specifically gives the power to recover possession between June and September as potentially an oversight. One of the written statements we received—RRB 04, for Committee members—highlights that as well. The ground seems to fail to consider other kinds of students, such as people on a one-year Masters that starts in January, or nursing students who are often studying over the summer. I know, as I am friends with some of those people, that they found it hard enough to get housing on a non-traditional term as it was, without giving landlords a particular power to kick them out halfway through the summer when they are halfway through their course. Do you share that concern, and do you have suggestions for whether that should be changed?

Victoria Tolmie-Loverseed: There are significant numbers of students—I do not know the exact numbers, but more and more are starting with January start dates. Some universities have five points in the year when you can start a degree or a Masters. It is problematic for Masters students whose course goes on until September or October, when they are having to write up, or PhD students. That can be difficult. I think there should be more flexibility in the current timetable of June to September, and perhaps in the ability to give notice at different points in the year for student properties.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sam Carling]

Q Picking up on the point you made about illegal evictions, is there anything we can do with the landlord database to help with that and some of the other issues you raise?

Anny Cullum: I think the landlord database will be excellent. It is important from our point of view that the landlord database includes information for tenants on previous enforcement action that has been taken against landlords, because you can then make an informed choice as a tenant about where you would like to rent. That will be another way to deter landlords from behaving illegally because they know they will have a mark against their name on the register. We hope the register will mean that, rather than tenants trying to compete for homes at the moment, landlords are competing for tenants by behaving in a good way and providing a good service. Having that sort of information on the database would be incredibly helpful.

[Carla Denyer]

Q I want to ask about one of the things in your submission, so this may help you to expand on it. I thought your proposal on the right to withhold rent for serious disrepair is interesting: it sounds quite radical on the surface, but in any other sector, if one party was breaching a contract and failing to deliver a service, it would be quite normal to withhold payments. Can you expand at all on how that would work in practice or how you envisage it working? What are Acorn’s views on the proposed regime for managing unaffordable rent hikes, and is it enough?

Anny Cullum: On withholding rent for serious disrepair, there are much-improved schemes and action within the Bill around the decent homes standard and improving standards for tenants, but a lot of the action set out to be taken if tenants are experiencing disrepair is retroactive or down the line. We know that councils can take a long time to act and that lots of tenants will not pursue things like rent repayment orders because they just do not have the time and energy. But if someone is living with serious disrepair—things like the damp and mould laid out in Awaab’s law, which we are pleased to see moving over to the private rented sector—we think there could be a mechanism whereby, if it is not fixed within the timescale set out by Awaab’s law, they could withhold their rent and pay it to a third party, which could then give the landlord another timescale within which to solve it. If they did not solve it, the tenant would get the rent paid back. If they did, the landlord would get the rent.

That would be an immediate incentive to do the work and stop leaving people in the dangerous conditions we see all the time. Landlords are not necessarily going to worry in the moment about a rent repayment order that a tenant may or may not put in for, which would take ages to go through a court—landlords sometimes do not even pay them anyway—whereas, if you can withhold the rent, that will speed along the process of sorting out mouldy and unsafe homes. So that is the mechanism we would think of. There are lots of considerations as to how it could work. If you consult on bringing Awaab’s law into the private rented sector, that will be a good place to think about the best mechanism to do it.

I think your second question was about rent hikes—rent rises.