Renters (Reform) Bill

Feryal Clark Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 24th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jacob Young]

As I said, we introduced the White Paper in 2022. We published the Bill just last year in 2023, and we are taking it forward today to abolish section 21. She talks about Conservative Members. I can tell her—she will not read this in the newspapers—that I have been lobbied by Members on both sides of this House to ensure that the reforms work effectively. That is what the changes that we are making today on Report will do. They will bring balance to the Bill, delivering security for tenants and, as I said, fairness to landlords. The amendments will ensure that the new tenancy system works effectively.

[Feryal Clark (Enfield North) (Lab)]

Since the Government promised to outlaw section 21 evictions in 2019, more than 2,000 people in Enfield have been subject to no-fault evictions, costing the council millions of pounds to rehouse them. The Minister talks about fairness to landlords, but does he recognise the cost to renters, and indeed to local authorities through temporary accommodation?

--- Later in debate ---

[Matthew Pennycook]

I thank the hon. and learned Gentleman for that point. We all want the processes to be quicker—I do not think that is in dispute at all—and they certainly could be made quicker. Landlords need robust grounds for possessions in legitimate circumstances, and they need the system to operate quickly when they do. The question for us today is: should we essentially put the abolition of section 21 on hold until we have reassurance about an undefined amount of improvement and if we do not know when that is going to be delivered?

[Feryal Clark]

All I have heard is about the importance of ensuring that the courts are functioning quickly enough to enable landlords to evict the tenants they want to evict, but currently renters have just over a month before they are evicted. I had a constituent who lost his son in the most horrific of circumstances—it was in the local papers—whose family was served a section 21 notice. The landlord knew the family had lost a child, but said they had to serve it because the family still had a month and they needed to get them to leave. Where is the protection for renters, and does my hon. Friend agree that kicking abolition of section 21 notices into the long grass means the Government do not care about renters at all?

[Matthew Pennycook]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight the impact on renters, and that is essentially what we are debating. With every month that passes, more private renters are served section 21 notices. Nearly 85,000 of them have been put at risk of homelessness as a result of being served one of those notices, as the Government have delayed the implementation of their commitment. As the Bill is drafted—even with Government new clause 30—Ministers can determine whenever they want to signal to the House that the courts are ready. We have had no assurances on that point, and that is not satisfactory.

In our view, Government new clause 30 is nothing more than a mechanism designed to facilitate the further delay of the complete abolition of section 21 evictions, and we will look to vote against it. With the Government having previously made it clear that there will be a requirement for advance notice of six months before new tenancies are converted, and a minimum of 12 months between that conversion and the transition of existing tenancies—with a proposal that the latter will also be made subject to the assessment required by Government new clause 30—it could be years before renters see section 21 completely abolished, making a complete mockery of the Secretary of State’s recent claim that such notices will be “outlawed” by the next general election.

We know the Government are in no rush to abolish section 21 evictions because they are not laying the groundwork that is necessary for that to happen. Where are the draft prescribed forms for section 8 notices, and where are the proposed amended court forms and civil procedure rules? There is no sign of them, or of any sense of what the regulations required to bring them forward might be. The truth is that Ministers determined long ago, for reasons that are entirely obvious, to essentially kick the can down the road on abolishing section 21 while disingenuously denying it. Although the passage of the Bill will be taken as a signal of abolition before the next general election, private renters outside will know that is not the case, and that implementation has been pushed back, potentially indefinitely.

We believe that hard-pressed renters have waited long enough for the commitment made by the Conservatives over five years ago to be delivered. They require certainty that it will truly be honoured, and section 21 evictions definitively abolished with the passing of this legislation. Our amendment 28 would provide that certainty by ensuring that section 21 of the Housing Act 1988 is repealed on the day that the Bill receives Royal Assent, with saving provisions for any notices served before that date so that they remain valid and of lawful effect. I commend the amendment to the House.

Government new clauses 27, 28 and 30, to which I have made reference, are only three of the 225 Government amendment tabled just before the deadline last week. Before concluding, I will touch briefly on several of the more substantive among them, starting with the small number that will be genuine improvements to the Bill. We are pleased that the Government have responded to our calls to ensure the maintenance of a number of the regulatory obligations that have built up around section 21 notices over the years by tabling Government new clause 14, which gives the Secretary of State the power by regulation to transpose those preconditions and requirements into section 8 eviction notices.