Renters (Reform) Bill

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 23rd October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, I have an enormous amount of respect for the work that he does in this area. I would draw a distinction between the response to the Select Committee’s report and the bringing forward of legislation, but he is absolutely right to draw attention to the fact that we need to consider—and we are—our responses to the consultations on registration and on changes to planning use requirements in the short-term let market. We hope to come forward shortly with our response to those consultations. I should also say that I had the opportunity last week to talk to the founder of Airbnb, and I outlined concerns very similar to those that the hon. Gentleman has outlined.

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

rose—

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

rose—

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[Caroline Lucas]

There is plenty to welcome in this Bill, but it should have been an opportunity to increase minimum energy efficiency standards. When the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero last week tried to defend the scrapping of energy efficiency standards for the PRS, she essentially said, on the Floor of the House, that it was because they could cost property owners up to £15,000. The right hon. Gentleman will know that the regulations include a £10,000 cap, so the cost cannot possibly be £15,000; indeed, according to the Government’s own assessment, the average cost of upgrading homes to an energy performance certificate rating of C would be less than £5,000. Will he please correct the record, apologise on behalf of his colleague, who has misled the House, and put it on the record that it could not possibly cost £15,000? His own assessment suggests that it costs less than £5,000.

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady; no one could doubt her sincerity or her commitment to making sure that we improve the condition of homes and that we deal with energy efficiency. The first thing to say is that the cost will be determined in the market. The amount that an individual might have to pay can be capped by legislation, but the cost is a function of the market. The second thing that it is important to stress is that the decent homes standard, and indeed the work we are doing on retrofitting overall, will improve, and has improved, energy efficiency, but we need to balance the improvement of energy efficiency against the costs that individual landlords and tenants face in a cost-of-living time that is challenging.

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[Angela Rayner]

We need legislation for decent homes alongside these provisions. I hope that we can get into that, and how we can protect people, in Committee. As the Secretary of State acknowledged, at the moment many families face a situation of inadequate housing, which goes beyond the scope of the Bill. I think we all agree that that needs to be addressed as soon as possible.

[Caroline Lucas]

On decent home standards, would the right hon. Lady support the integration of Awaab’s law into the Bill? We are talking about delays, but my concern is that if those provisions do not make it into the Bill right now, our constituents, including some of mine in Brighton, will still be living in absolutely atrocious accommodation, with water streaming down their walls, mould and kids getting ill.

[Angela Rayner]

If we can address that in the Bill, we should push for it, but we should also push to ensure that, whether in social housing or private rentals, people should have confidence that their homes are safe. Homes should be a safe place, but at the moment, that is not the case for too many.

Huge swathes of renters have been left paying a heavy price for the Government’s inaction on section 21. This is real for people such as the Brady family, who live in Wiltshire and have experienced two no-fault evictions in the past two years. Mr Brady is a gardener and Mrs Brady works full time. After being forced out of their home, where they had lived for 15 years, they have resorted to living in their van. The family are able to bid on council houses when they become available, but so far, everything has been at least an hour away from where they live. Mr Brady said:

“There is a housing crisis and there are reasons behind it—you can use whatever excuses you want but it is a political decision. It was a political decision not to build enough houses, it was a political decision to sell off the social housing stock.”

Those are not my words but the words of a man who would still have a roof over his head if the Government had not dragged their feet.

I feel that more delay is inevitable. Conservative Members threatened in the newspapers this weekend to choose their self-interest over the national interest by opposing or delaying the Bill. They do not want to see these changes enacted. Then, on Friday evening, the Department snuck out the suggestion that section 21 changes are dependent on court improvements, which could take years to complete. Today we discovered—not from an announcement to the press, to Parliament or to the public, but from a leak—that that is indeed the core part of a grubby private deal that the Secretary of State has struck behind closed doors with his own Back Benchers. So the Government who broke our justice system are now using their own failure as an excuse to break their own promises.

Just how long will it take? Can the Secretary of State promise that the Government will meet the pledge they made at the last general election, which he mentioned, before the next general election? Renters simply cannot afford any more excuses or delays; he must provide clarity on that. [Interruption.] I know that he is a confident Secretary of State—he says so from a sedentary position—and I have confidence in his abilities, but people who are facing section 21 notices cannot afford any more dither and delay. He will get support from those on the Labour Benches in enacting this legislation to protect families who need protection.

We think that the Bill is a good starting point. We fear that a number of loopholes have been left in it, however. One such loophole is the commencement clause, which leaves Ministers the power to decide when—or, perhaps, whether—to actually bring an end to section 21. But that is not the only loophole. I hope that the Minister will engage with us constructively in Committee to close all those loopholes and strengthen the Bill in a range of areas.

For example, the new grounds for and protections from evictions are a welcome step, but the details on those grounds remain vague. On evictions, there remains a loophole by which renters are protected only for the first six months of their tenancy if their landlord decides to sell the property or move back in. That time limit needs to be increased as part of the Bill to give renters proper protection.

On section 21, it is not just a question of when the law is implemented but of how. Every household threatened with homelessness by a section 21 notice has the right to assistance from their local council to prevent them from becoming homeless, but the Bill removes that right to immediate help. That loophole could lead to a huge spike in homelessness and must be closed.

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

It is about time. It is nearly five years since promises were first made to tenants facing soaring rents, huge energy bills, cold and damp homes, and limited rights. We are now on our 15th Housing Minister since 2010, and the Government are fast running out of time to make good on the promises in the Bill. Unforgivably late though it is, the Bill is important and provides a genuine opportunity to move towards the most basic goal of creating fairer, greener homes. It is clear that the market has become over-commodified and grossly distorted. We have a generation who will never be able to earn enough to have a mortgage, and cannot even afford their rents now. Key workers are being forced out of the places they work in, families uprooted, children forced to move schools, revenge evictions for those who complain—the list goes on.

More people are becoming homeless following rising evictions from the private rented sector. Annual Government figures released recently show a 23% increase in people at risk of homelessness because of a section 21 no-fault eviction. I welcome this delayed but essential Bill, not least because Brighton and Hove is one of the most expensive cities to rent in outside London, with a large proportion of renters being ripped off on a long-term basis with no end in sight. Recent analysis shows that in our city rents have jumped by 47% since 2011, and wages have risen by 35%. To put that another way, since 2011, renters in Brighton and Hove paid £530 million more to landlords than if housing costs had matched wages.

There are some good principles and useful changes in the Bill, such as measures on security of tenure, a new ombudsman and so on, but there are also glaring loopholes and big omissions. In particular, the measures on rent increases are inadequate and rely on a resource-intensive and time-consuming appeals process that could see tenants worse off at the end of it, as the tribunal process includes a power to impose a higher rent than the one the tenant is appealing. At the very least that power needs to be removed. Indeed, Ministers need to go further and get to grips with the fact that many people simply cannot afford their rent as it stands.

Many of my constituents are paying massively more than 30% of their gross monthly income on housing costs. That is unsustainable and we need a conversation about a national system for rent controls with local flexibility. Such a system will need to be both bold and implemented gradually and fairly, introduced alongside a suite of policies to address the housing crisis, including a major increase in social house building and real support for community-led housing.

As well as tackling demand and sky-high rents, dealing with insecurity of tenure is vital, so it is right that the Bill contains measures for periodic tenancies, and to ban section 21 no-fault evictions, and that students in the general PRS are also included. As many have said, it is deeply concerning that last Friday the Government appeared to have kicked that part of the Bill down the road—who knows how long for?—by saying that they first need to fix the mess that they have made of the court delays. We need to know exactly when we can expect that part of the Bill to come back.

Even before last Friday’s attack on the section 21 provision, there had been noises about a possible Government amendment to exclude students from the reforms. I remind the Secretary of State of his own White Paper, in which he says:

“It is important that students have the same opportunity to live in a secure home and challenge poor standards as others in the PRS.”

Well, I agree with that.

As well as ensuring that students remain included, we need to firmly shut another glaring loophole in the no-fault eviction ban. In the Bill, if a landlord seeks to sell or to move in themselves, they can issue a no-fault eviction notice and the no-let period after they use that exemption is just three months. That is too short and could easily be abused. For example, a landlord could evict tenants by saying they want to move in and re-let just 12 weeks later. That no-let period should be nearer 12 months. Good landlords genuinely using these exemptions would have nothing to fear from that.

I welcome the proposals for the portal, although I would like to see far more issues covered on it. That portal has real potential to improve enforcement of energy-efficiency standards and to ensure warm and dry homes. I was dismayed when the Prime Minister announced last month that he would be scrapping the updated minimum energy efficiency standards for private rented homes under the pretext of saving people from expensive upgrades. It is not hard-pressed tenants and families who will be required to upgrade their homes, but the landlords who would no longer be allowed to rent out cold and inefficient homes.

Private renters live in some of the leakiest homes in the UK, with more than a quarter of households living in fuel poverty. As the Climate Change Committee has observed, these regulations would have cut energy bills significantly—by around £325 a year on average at current prices. Ministers need to stop this false dichotomy between climate action on the one hand and costs on the other, and admit that, in cutting our emissions, we can also deliver warmer and more comfortable homes. The Government need to bring forward an amendment in Committee to require all privately rented homes to be energy performance certificate grade C by 2028 at the latest.

Finally, we know that the UK’s inadequate housing stock is eroding not only people’s budgets, but their health and wellbeing. The death of two-year-old Awaab Ishak in 2020 as a result of prolonged exposure to mould in his home environment was a terrible tragedy and an utter scandal in the social housing sector. It is frankly shocking that the decent homes standard still does not apply to private rented homes, with the Government admitting that almost one in four of those homes in the private rented sector would not meet this most basic standard.

The vague commitment for jam tomorrow while children breathe in dangerous mould today is simply not good enough. It is not good enough for the mum in Brighton who emails to say that her daughter has been coughing for two months because of the leaky, unsafe, insecure flat that she is desperate to leave. It is not good enough for my constituents who are ill from long-term exposure to mould, living with walls that are dripping wet and a permanent cough, or those whose rented accommodation was so bad that it was recently filmed by the BBC for their “Rip Off Britain” feature. Again and again in my constituency casework I hear about landlords who blame tenants for the problems caused by structural issues that the landlords have themselves ignored, such as the landlords who kept one family’s £1,730 deposit to pay for mould removal and redecoration. That is frankly outrageous.

Will Ministers give us a timeframe for decent homes legislation and confirm that it will be in the King’s Speech next month? Will they explain how the Government can possibly justify failing to ensure that all landlords are compelled to act on health hazards, such as damp and mould, in a timely manner? Will they act with urgency to apply Awaab’s law to the private rented sector?