Renters’ Rights Bill

Debate between Florence Eshalomi and David Simmonds

Tuesday 14th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[David Simmonds]

There are a number of ways to address that issue. The Minister has talked compensation, and we have tabled amendments on insurance, but clearly there needs to be an effective dispute resolution mechanism in place, so that such situations can be resolved when they arise. We were focused in particular on ensuring that there is sufficient flexibility when, for example, work must be carried out to improve energy efficiency or to address health and safety concerns such as mould, and a tenant needs to leave because the work will render the property uninhabitable.

Although there have been substantial areas of agreement on the Bill, much of which takes forward work that started under the previous Government in their Renters (Reform) Bill, we have concerns that it creates significant new problems for the availability and affordability of accommodation in the private rented sector. That sector, we must not forget, enjoys the highest tenant satisfaction of any private tenure: 82% of private renters say that they are satisfied with their accommodation.

The backdrop is challenging, and has become a lot more so recently. The Chancellor’s Budget has set inflation rising, and borrowing costs are soaring. Markets are responding to the chaos in No. 11, and that is causing a great deal of uncertainty for tenants and landlords alike. Her decisions are stoking inflation, and that is pushing up rent and housing costs of all kinds. The black hole in local government funding, which was unveiled just before Christmas, means that councils facing the twin existential threats of wholesale reorganisation and growing funding shortfalls lack certainty from the Government about the funding to deliver this enormous increase in workload.

[Florence Eshalomi]

I know that the shadow Minister cares passionately about this area, especially in the light of his local government experience. Given that financial pressures on local authorities are added to by the need to provide temporary accommodation to families facing eviction, does he agree that we should have abolished section 21 no-fault evictions sooner?

[David Simmonds]

I say gently to the hon. Lady that had Labour-run Lambeth council not recently rushed to put 200 of its own people on the streets using section 21, because it is concerned about the impact that the Bill will have on its housing situation, that would have more credibility. It is clear that this is a difficult situation in all parts of the country. There is a significant shortfall in emergency accommodation in London in particular, and a rising cost attached to it there, just as other areas of the country have a surplus of accommodation. That is all part of a complex picture. We need to make sure that everything works efficiently and effectively together, and it is absolutely right that we set out our concerns about whether the Bill goes far enough in all areas towards addressing those issues—and about whether, in some cases, it goes too far.

I touched on the impact of the black hole in local government funding. Another area that is driving significant pressure is the Government’s approach to asylum. They are granting refugee status faster, so people are being pushed out of the doors of Home Office asylum dispersal accommodation and on to local housing waiting lists. I am sure that many hon. Members in this Chamber will have been lobbied by their local authority about the impact of that additional pressure—those additional people, who under our laws are perfectly entitled to that housing—on supply in their area. All those things have a huge collective impact on the pool of available housing.

Of course, as we have seen in the news, the declining confidence abroad in our economy is reducing the number of overseas students. That makes it more important than ever to support thriving student accommodation through tenancies that address students’ needs properly—especially the needs of students who are older, have families, or are studying for higher degrees and have a fixed commitment to a location. All those requirements need to be addressed effectively in this legislation.

Does the Bill in its new form rise to those challenges? It is clear that it fails to ensure that landlords can recover their property quickly when they need to. That reduces their incentive to rent it out, especially for small landlords. If the hon. Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Tulip Siddiq) needs to recover some of her property portfolio to return it to another owner, will she have the assurance under this Bill that due process is available to her? The Bill fails to ensure a flexibility and freedom of contract that allows tenants and landlords to agree a deal that suits them both. Students wanting to book accommodation for a guaranteed period of two years—or shorter or longer—and those moving to a new location for a fixed-term work contract require opportunities and flexibility that are taken away by this legislation.

The Bill takes away landlords’ opportunity to make allowances for financially riskier tenants, such as those with a poor credit record, through rent in advance or other safeguarding arrangements that give the landlord confidence that they will not lose out. That locks financially vulnerable people out of the rental market. The Bill also puts enormous obligations on local councils—one of the biggest additional sets of burdens and expectations in generations—and there is no real clarity yet on how it will be resourced, at a time when all the wider uncertainties that I have described add up to a great deal of additional cost. The Bill also fails to provide the necessary assurance that tenants who have pets and need to access insurance as part of their tenancy conditions will be able to find affordable insurance. That is dealt with in our new clause 21. More concerning still, the Bill is a missed opportunity to provide this House with a proper impact assessment, or the assurance of a future review that would give us really good evidence on which to base our decisions. Our new clause 20 would address that shortcoming, and the House will have the opportunity to vote for it shortly.

Let me give an example of where there is significant uncertainty. In some of the political knockabout, the Government have sought to blame their predecessor for court delays, while claiming that there are no delays worthy of regard in the passage of this Bill, which loads more regulation on to the sector. Both of those things cannot be true simultaneously, so let us properly assess the impact of the Bill before we legislate. There is a lot of good will—for example, on the point about tenants with pets being able to access the accommodation that they need. We do not want to find ourselves returning to this issue in the House because the legislation failed to achieve what we had hoped.

Clearly, it is the role of this Chamber to scrutinise and question, and it is the role of the Opposition to oppose when we cannot see that the legislation before us will result in an improvement in the lot of the people of this country. A pattern is emerging. The Government came after the farmers. They came after the pubs. They came after the small businesses. They came after the private schools. They came after our local councillors. Now this Bill, in its new form, comes after our tenants and our landlords. It is very clear from the number of Government amendments, which the Minister referred to, that the points we made in Committee about the many shortcomings of the Bill that need to be addressed were not lost on the Government.

I return to the point that even a Labour council—a bastion such as Lambeth, led by the Labour chair of London Councils—is rushing to use section 21 to evict its own tenants in advance of this Bill because of the impact it will have. A Labour council and a Labour Government are putting their own people out of their homes.