Tenancies (Reform) Bill

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Friday 28th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Teather (Brent Central) (LD)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

I want to begin by telling the story of one of my constituents. I do not want to give her real name, so I am going to call her Jo. She and her partner had a pretty horrendous year last year and, in spite of the best efforts of our local citizens advice bureau in Brent, it all went from bad to worse. Jo was living in a studio flat with her partner, but there were real problems with the property. The ceiling collapsed as a result of leaking drains upstairs and, to make matters worse, there was no heating in the flat.

Being a reasonable tenant, and expecting the best of her landlord, Jo reported the problems to her landlord. Rather than trying to fix the problem, as one might hope would be the case, the landlord responded by giving Jo and her partner a basin to catch the water dripping from the collapsed ceiling. Understandably, Jo and her partner continued to press the landlord to get the problems fixed, but the next time the landlord responded, he did so by beginning eviction proceedings. Jo had become a victim of retaliatory eviction.

I dare say that many colleagues in the House will have heard similar stories to Jo’s in their advice surgeries over the years, because, sadly, this situation is not as unusual as we might like to think. I hope that there will be time today for colleagues to air some of their stories. Jo’s story is also depressingly familiar to organisations such as Citizens Advice and the charity Shelter, whose advisers are all too frequently contacted by people who are facing eviction after making requests for repairs to be carried out in their property. They are the victims of a small minority of landlords who would rather get rid of tenants than bring their properties up to scratch.

It is because of stories like those that I am bringing the Tenancies (Reform) Bill to the House today, and I ask the House to support it. No one should be evicted for asking their landlord to do basic repairs. No one should be frightened to tell their landlord about a problem for fear of losing their home. No one should be forced to put up with poor conditions because their landlord might retaliate if they make a fuss. This is about fairness and decency, and about doing the right thing. It is about upholding the existing law, and it should benefit everyone: tenants, landlords and local authorities.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this important debate. Does she agree that at the heart of the issue is a massive power imbalance between landlords and tenants, and that if we could get that power balance more in equity, tenants would be able to press for the things that they need in order to have a secure roof over their head.

[Sarah Teather]

The hon. Lady is correct to say that there is a power imbalance. I will talk more about this later, but I do not want to skew the power wholly in favour of the tenant either. This has to be about fairness; both landlord and tenant have to be treated well. The landlord needs to know that they can let their property without being exploited by the tenant, and the tenant needs to know that they can live in a decent property without being exploited by the landlord. This is about levelling things out a bit, through a relatively small change in the law.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather) on helping to put and keep this important issue on the agenda. I am delighted to hear how much support the Bill has from hon. Members on both sides of the House. No matter what background we approach this from, we all agree that the Bill is an important and proportionate response to a real problem.

I represent a constituency that, by 2021, will have more home renters than home owners, so I welcome the chance to set out my constituents’ concerns and to back the Bill. In fact, a number of my constituents feel so strongly about the matter that they have come here to watch the debate. We cannot overestimate the misery and distress that is caused to tenants by the fear of eviction, meaning that they end up living and bringing up their kids in incredibly poor conditions.

Like many colleagues, I have been lobbied extensively about the issue. I echo the concerns of residents in Brighton, Pavilion that far too many people who rent in the private sector are not secure in their homes because of the threat of revenge evictions, and that too many have nowhere else to go, which is one of the things that makes the prospect of a revenge eviction so frightening. With the Government’s cruel bedroom tax, attacks on housing benefit and other so-called welfare reforms, for many of my constituents, the risk of homelessness is higher than ever.

In those circumstances, landlords hold all the cards. They wield unreasonable power, and the vast majority of landlords who are reasonable and fair lose out because of an immoral, irresponsible and greedy minority who give all of them a bad name. It is that imbalance of power that I hope we can end today.

I would like to read from an e-mail from one of my constituents, who works for the highly respected Brighton Housing Trust. This is what she says from her experience of working on the issue, day in, day out:

“Each year, I see hundreds of tenants served with a Section 21 notice seeking possession because they have dared to complain to their landlord about disrepair in their accommodation.

This has ranged from low-level complaints about dirty carpets and broken doors, to the more serious bed bug and rat infestations. One memorable case involved a pregnant woman with a young toddler, prevented from accessing her flat via her front door and reliant upon climbing up unsecured scaffolding with her pram simply to access her property.

Largely, these tenants are deprived and vulnerable, reliant upon housing benefit to pay their rent and terrified of being asked to vacate where so many properties remain completely beyond of the LHA rate, and without the funds necessary to pay deposits, administration fees, and rent in advance. Many weigh up the risks and decide that ultimately, living with even the most serious disrepair is better than facing street homelessness. This is not a choice that should have to be made.”

I completely agree that that is not a choice that anyone should have to make.

Many other cases have been brought to my attention, including by Home Sweet Home in Brighton and Hove, which was in Parliament today to lobby me. I pay tribute to its work and that of local organisations such as the citizens advice bureau and the Brighton Housing Trust, which support tenants when they make a complaint about the standard of their housing and, when that backfires, face the prospect of a revenge eviction.

I want to focus on tenants who are particularly concerned about damp and cold in their homes and the ill health that that causes for their kids. They simply want their landlords to undertake related repairs or to provide basic insulation. I have written to the Chancellor ahead of next week’s autumn statement asking why not one penny of Treasury infrastructure funding is devoted to energy efficiency. That failure is at the heart of why, at the start of the year, more than 2 million children in England were living in fuel poverty. A survey by Netmums found that one in four families have had to choose between heating and eating.

Allocating just 2% of the Government’s annual £45 billion infrastructure budget to retrofitting homes, cutting energy bills and tackling fuel poverty would allow 500,00 low-income homes to be made highly energy-efficient every year. Only that level of investment approaches the scale that is needed to tackle the scandal of fuel poverty.

Giving better protection to private rented sector tenants who ask their landlords to make their homes warm will make an enormous difference, too. A simple clarification of when a section 21 notice cannot be served could help to transform millions of lives and help to ensure that more people live securely in homes that are of a decent standard. The Bill is needed to protect all tenants who currently have to risk eviction or homelessness every time they ask for basic repairs to their home. I am backing it on behalf of the growing number of private rented sector tenants in Brighton, Pavilion.

I could say a lot more, but other Members wish to speak and I want to make sure that we have an opportunity to vote today, because it is clear that the Bill is supported by Members on both sides of the House. Let me end by telling one final story, which was brought to me by a tenant just a few weeks ago. His boiler broke down on 17 December last year. He contacted his landlord, who said he would send one of his people to look at it, which happened the next day. The verdict was that the boiler was dangerous, so the gas was disconnected. Later that same day, he contacted the landlord to ask what was happening. The landlord said that he was off to Spain for a holiday and that the tenant should instead deal with the letting agent. The letting agent replied, “What do you expect me to do? It’s Christmas.” The agent allowed the situation to go on for three weeks before the boiler was repaired.

When the tenant complained to the agent that he had paid full rent for a flat he could not stay in, he was told that it was nothing to do with the agent and he should take the matter up with the landlord. The landlord said that he could not be bothered with all the hassle and told the tenant to go back to the agent. We can all imagine what happened when my constituent did go back to the agent. The agent said that the landlord had made a response, which was in the post, and it does not take a great deal of imagination to realise that what was in the post was a section 21 notice. The tenant was evicted. It took him months to recover financially, and now he would think twice before raising such concerns again.

That kind of practice is simply unacceptable, and we have the opportunity today to do something about it. The Bill is a proportionate response that has huge backing in the House. I hope that Members will not speak for hours and that we can instead proceed with ensuring that the Bill swiftly gets into Committee.