Renters’ Rights Bill

Chris Vince Excerpts

Wednesday 9th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to contribute to this important debate and speak in favour of this Bill. Before I do so, let me take the opportunity to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton Kemptown and Peacehaven (Chris Ward) for his excellent speech. As the Member for Harlow, I live in a town full of Spurs supporters, so he is not overly popular at the moment, but my chief of staff is a fellow Seagull, so he will be pleased to show my hon. Friend support.

This is a really important debate to me, because Harlow constituency has nearly 6,000 households in the private rented sector and suffered from the previous Government’s ill-thought-out permitted development legislation. However, like many people who have already spoken, this debate also has personal resonance for me as somebody who worked for two years at a homelessness charity in Harlow called Streets2Homes. My role was generally to go out, sometimes into woodland and industrial areas, to find reported rough sleepers, get them registered with our charity and help get them off the street and, quite often, into the rented sector. That is why I personally welcome this legislation, which rejects the concept of no-fault evictions, and am looking forward to voting for it later.

The experience of working for a homelessness charity can often be challenging, but sometimes it can be baffling as well. It is unbelievable to me that in my previous role, I found it easier to house someone with an alcohol or drug addiction than someone with a dog. That includes guide dogs—we had one in this Chamber earlier—as well as emotional support dogs and assistance dogs. Those are animals who help people cope with and manage medical conditions, so that is not the kind of barrier that people with those conditions should be facing. It is like saying that we will not allow people with an inhaler for their asthma to have a house. While at conference this year, I had the opportunity to visit the Guide Dogs stall and talk to the wonderful people who support that wonderful charity. They highlighted this issue to me, and I was appalled by the lack of awareness of it. It is an issue faced every day by people who are already at a disadvantage; we should be making their journey into a home easier, not putting up walls and barriers against them.

As a dog owner myself—I am not sure I am going to introduce my dog to Jennie just yet, because he might get a bit carried away—I emphasise how important having a pet is to a family, and the emotional bond that they create. Being pushed to choose between a roof over your head and your family is not a choice anyone should have to make. Here is a statistic—

[Johanna Baxter (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Chris Vince]

I will.

[Johanna Baxter]

Does my hon. Friend agree that once consent for a pet is granted, that consent needs to remain for the duration of the tenancy, and that we could strengthen the Bill by making that explicit in it?

[Chris Vince]

Ultimately, I want to do what I can to support people who have pets in their home, and my hon. Friend is right to say that we do not want people to face the anxiety of potentially being in a situation where a pet could be forced out of their home.

As I was about to say, 62% of homeowners in the UK have a pet, and as was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Chris Curtis), we are a nation of pet lovers. Let us be very clear: this is not about punishing landlords, and never has been; this is about protecting tenants’ basic rights. There needs to be clear guidance on what reasonable pet ownership means, and I am glad that the Bill recognises that.

Furthermore, 57,340 households were threatened with homelessness due to the end of an assured shorthold tenancy, which is an increase of 4.6% on 2022-23. People cannot be treated with such a dismissal. Some 21% of renters live in what we refer to as non-decent homes—homes that are not fit for living in—and this is somehow allowed. Renters are not and should not be treated in a lesser way than homeowners. They should be entitled to the same security in their lives as homeowners.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Housing and Planning (Matthew Pennycook)]

It is a real pleasure to close this Second Reading debate, and I thank all hon. and right hon. Members who participated in it. Members from all parts of the House have spoken with passion and clarity, and there has been a large number of outstanding contributions. I pay particular tribute to the six Members who made their maiden speeches this afternoon, including my five hon. Friends on the Government Benches. The quality was uniformly high, and I wish each of them well in their parliamentary career.

I am encouraged by the broad support expressed today for the main principles of the Bill. The current system for private renting is broken, and renters have been demanding change for years. That is why, as my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister made clear in opening the debate, the case for fundamentally reforming England’s insecure and unjust private rented sector, and taking decisive action to drive up standards in it, is as watertight as they come. The experience of renting privately must be improved. It already would have been, to an extent, had the previous Government not buckled under pressure from vested interests in the dying months of the last Parliament.

This Labour Government will succeed where the Conservative Government failed by finally modernising regulation of the sector. In contrast to the previous Government’s attempt, we will do so in a way that truly delivers for renters, as well as for good landlords, by addressing the numerous defects, deficiencies, omissions and, most importantly, fatal loopholes that the previous Government’s legislation contained.

[Chris Vince]

Does the Minister agree that this legislation will help not only the many people in the private rented sector, but charities, such as the one I worked for in Harlow, which helps people who are homeless to get into the private rented sector? Would he also agree that this legislation could have come much sooner?

[Matthew Pennycook]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We think that the legislation will take the burden off advice charities. The database provisions will ensure that tenants and landlords have access to information, and know better what is required from them under the new system. It is absolutely right that we move at pace to get the legislation through the House.

During the many hours we have debated the Bill, an extremely wide range of issues have been raised, and I will seek to respond to as many as possible in the time available to me. First, I want to address the reasoned amendment tabled by the Opposition. My opposite number, the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds), struck a constructive tone, but when the shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for North West Essex (Mrs Badenoch), made the case for the reasoned amendment, we were treated to a bizarre spectacle; she chid us for copying and pasting many of the sensible provisions in the previous Government’s Bill, but then told us that those provisions would have “added to the chaos”. The problem is that she supported that legislation at every stage. She voted for its Second Reading; she supported it through Committee; and she voted for the carry-over motion to see it progress. She voted for it on Report and Third Reading, and took it into wash-up. She now asks us to accept that she believed it was flawed all along. Well, party leadership election contests can do funny things. She may not have confidence in her manifesto—which, let me remind her, stated that the Government at that time were committed to passing renters reform along the lines of their previous legislation—but we have confidence in ours and we are determined to deliver it.