Private Rented Sector White Paper

Debate between Florence Eshalomi and Matthew Pennycook

Thursday 3rd November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to wind up this important debate on behalf of the Opposition. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) and the hon. Member for Dover (Mrs Elphicke) on securing the debate, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing time for it.

I also thank my hon. Friends the Members for Stockport (Navendu Mishra), for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi), for York Central (Rachael Maskell), for Putney (Fleur Anderson) and for Westminster North (Ms Buck), and the hon. Members for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) and for North Devon (Selaine Saxby), for their excellent contributions and powerful case studies. Collectively, they highlighted both the particular challenges facing private renters and how these challenges vary across the country, and that, irrespective of geography, there is a need to overhaul the private rented sector and to better regulate both short-term holiday lets and excessive rates of second home ownership as a matter of urgency.

I put on record our thanks to all the organisations that have made the case for rental reform over so many years, including Generation Rent, Crisis, Citizens Advice, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Shelter, Z2K, the New Economics Foundation, the Law Centres Network and various renters unions, as well as all the private renters who bravely shared their experiences publicly and the journalists who provided them with space to tell their stories. Their collective efforts have been integral to ensuring this issue is kept firmly at the top of the political agenda.

Labour strongly supports fundamental reform of the private rented sector, and we have called for it for many years. Regardless of whether they are a homeowner, a leaseholder or a tenant, everyone has the basic right to a decent, safe, secure and affordable home. Yet as this afternoon’s debate has reminded the House, millions of people renting privately live day in, day out with the knowledge that they could be uprooted with little notice and minimal, if any, justification.

On an individual level, the lack of certainty and security that is now inherent to renting privately results not only in ever-present anxiety about the prospect of losing one’s home but, for those at the lower end of the private rental market who have little or no purchasing power and who are increasingly concentrated geographically, as my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North said—there is an equalities dimension to this, too—a willingness to put up with often appalling conditions for fear that a complaint will lead to instant retaliatory eviction. That is why some of the worst housing standards are to be found in the private rented sector and why, despite the existence of many good landlords and a steady, if glacial, improvement in conditions overall, one in five private rented homes still does not meet the decent homes standard and one in 10 has a category 1 hazard posing a risk of serious harm.

For tenants forced to live in such substandard properties, whether they wake up every day to mould, vermin or dangerous hazards, what should be a place of refuge and comfort is instead a source of daily unease and, in many cases, torment and misery, which takes a huge toll on their physical and mental health.

Far too many tenants are evicted each year from a private tenancy without due cause, which is why so-called no-fault section 21 notices are a leading cause of homelessness in England. This broken system can no longer be tolerated, not least because the numbers affected have risen markedly over recent decades, as the hon. Member for Harrow East said.

This House last legislated to fundamentally alter the relationship between landlords and tenants in 1988, when I was just six years old—I suspect you were not that much older, Mr Deputy Speaker. The private rented sector has changed beyond recognition in the more than three decades since. Some 11 million people now rent from a private landlord. As well as the young and mobile, the sector now houses many older people and families with children, for whom greater security and certainty is essential for a flourishing life.

To ensure private renters get a fair deal, we need to transform how the sector is regulated and finally level the playing field between landlords and tenants. That is why, with important caveats, Labour welcomed the proposals in the White Paper when it was published in the summer. We unequivocally support the proposed ban on section 21 evictions. There is no justification for such notices, and they should have been scrapped long ago. We support the introduction of minimum standards in the private rented sector through the extension of the decent homes standards, although we have real concerns about how it might be enforced in practice given that it is not an enforceable standard in the social rented sector, where it already exists.

We recognise that landlords will need recourse to robust and effective grounds for possession in circumstances where there are good reasons for taking a property back, for example, because of antisocial or criminal behaviour. However, we want assurances that such grounds cannot be abused unfairly to evict tenants and that they will be tight enough to minimise fraudulent use of the kind we have seen in Scotland.

We welcome the proposed limit of rent increases to once per year, but we take issue with the inadequacy of the proposed measures in their ability to address unreasonable within-tenancy rent hikes of the kind that are likely to increase markedly once section 21 is scrapped and with the absence of any measures to tackle illegal evictions, a point that has been raised by my colleagues.

Labour would go further in several important respects, introducing a more comprehensive new renters’ charter, but we do want to see all 12 of the proposals set out in the White Paper translated into primary legislation as a matter of the utmost urgency. I cannot emphasise enough the need for that urgency, a point we have pressed time and again with successive Ministers, to no avail. There is a desperate need for the Government to act quickly, because the problems inherent in a sector that for far too many renters has always been characterised by insecurity, high rents and poor conditions, have become acute in recent months, as those renting privately struggle to cope with the impact of high inflation and rising prices.

As hon. Members will know, and as we have heard this afternoon, in many parts of the country rents in the private rented sector are surging and the costs involved with moving are soaring. With the Government having decided, once again, to shamefully freeze local housing allowance, millions of hard-pressed tenants are now being stretched to breaking point, with the risk of mass arrears and evictions that entails. What is so frustrating for Labour Members, and for those outside campaigning for renters’ reform and for private tenants themselves, is that instead of introducing legislation that we could have fast-tracked through this House to address this looming winter crisis, all we have, despite years of promises from successive Conservative Administrations that they would enact renters’ reform, is the White Paper and a vague promise, one that I had from the Minister’s predecessor just last week, to introduce a Bill at some point during the more than two years that remain of this Parliament.

[Florence Eshalomi]

On urgency, figures from the Local Government Association show that the ending of a private rented tenancy is the most common reason for homelessness, with this being responsible for 37% of homelessness between January and March this year alone —in those three months. Does my hon. Friend see that this urgent crisis needs solving now?

[Matthew Pennycook]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend on that, and I will come on to say why I think the situation is particularly urgent and what has happened in terms of the delay that has been caused. It is not good enough that the Government have taken so long to make progress on this issue. It is not as though they have not had ample time to legislate, even accounting for the impact of the pandemic. It is now well over three years since the Conservative Administration of the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) promised to abolish section 21 no-fault evictions. In that time, not only have hundreds of thousands of tenants been evicted through a section 21, but more than 45,000 households have been threatened with homelessness as a result of being served such notices. As my hon. Friend just mentioned, the figures released so far this year suggest that possession claims resulting from them are increasing markedly as the cost of living crisis intensifies.

Faced with a phenomenally difficult winter, private renters cannot wait until 2024 for the Government to act. I say to the new Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the hon. Member for Kensington (Felicity Buchan), whom I welcome to her place, that every extra month the Government delay bringing forward the renters’ reform Bill they have promised means thousands more private renters suffering. The Government must act, and they must act now. If they introduced emergency legislation enacting the proposals set out in the White Paper, Labour would support it and work with the Government to ensure it made rapid progress. But it is the Government alone who control the business of this House and only they can ensure the necessary legislation is given the priority it deserves. As I have put to Ministers before and sadly suspect I will have to do so again, it is high time the Government stopped talking a good game about private rented sector reform and finally got on with delivering it, because private renters have waited long enough for the protections that they deserve and that they rightly expect.

Leaseholders and Cladding: Greenwich and Woolwich

Debate between Florence Eshalomi and Matthew Pennycook

Monday 16th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

May I begin by thanking you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for granting the debate, and the Minister for taking time from his schedule to respond?

The debate concerns a subject of the utmost important to thousands, if not tens of thousands, of leaseholders in my south-east London constituency, and to hundreds of thousands more people across the country. For those who have not followed the twists and turns of this scandal since 2017, it is easy to forget just how staggering the scale of the cladding and mortgage crisis truly is. Its impact on an urban constituency of the kind that I represent has been, and continues to be, enormous. Within Greenwich and Woolwich, the external wall systems of more than 20 privately owned buildings across seven developments have been found to have aluminium composite material cladding of the type found on Grenfell Tower. The external wall systems of a further 59 buildings have been found to contain some other kind of combustible material, and many of those also have significant building safety defects, ranging from non-existent fire stopping to defective compartmentalisation. Thousands of leaseholders in countless other buildings locally—many with no defects whatever—remain mortgage prisoners or have had to absorb the significant costs of intrusive inspections to gain an EWS1 form.

I would be the first to concede that there are no simple or straightforward answers to this crisis, but based on my involvement in scores of cases over recent years, of which there are far too many to cover individually, there are some obvious things that the Government can and should do immediately to better support leaseholders, as well as a pressing need to provide greater clarity on the fundamental issue of leaseholder liability. In my remarks, I intend to touch on three specific areas where I believe decisive Government action is required—namely, public funding, buildings insurance and mortgages—before addressing that more fundamental issue of leaseholder liability.

Turning first to Government funding, while leaseholders will not easily forget the fact that previous Ministers had to be cajoled over several years into making various funding commitments, the public funding that the Government have made available for both ACM and non-ACM remediation is welcome, but further changes will need to be made, and I will speak briefly to three.

It is obvious that the deadlines involved in the building safety fund will have to be revised. The latest statistics released by the Department make clear that only 139 applications have been processed since 31 July—an average of just 17 a week. Even if the process accelerates markedly in the weeks ahead, there is no chance that more than a tiny proportion of eligible projects will have contracts in place by the 31 December deadline, given that the average time taken from the release of funds to having one in place is between 25 and 30 weeks. In responding, can the Minister confirm that he accepts that all the deadlines in the fund will have to be pushed back, including the 31 December deadline and the March deadline for people being on the ground and in place? When can this House expect an update to that effect?

The size of the building safety fund will clearly have to increase. It is well known that the Government’s own estimate is that the total cost of remediating non-ACM buildings will be in the order of £3 billion to £3.5 billion. The current size of the fund is only large enough to cover around 600 buildings, so even if a significant proportion of the 2,784 applications made to date are deemed ineligible or are rejected, it is patently obvious that the £1 billion of funding that has been allocated will still not be enough.

I appreciate that there are good reasons for the Government not to rush to announce additional funding, and I also trust that the Department is trying to make the funds that do exist go further by doing everything possible to convince developers to contribute to remedial costs in ways that do not prejudice applications to it, but it surely cannot be the case, as it is at present, that some affected leaseholders in non-ACM buildings over 18 metres will receive support from the taxpayer while others will not. Again, I would be grateful if the Minister could assure me—I phrase this carefully in order that he might—that the Government have not ruled out additional public support for non-ACM remediation beyond the moneys already committed.

[Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate on a big issue for my constituents in Vauxhall. On the funds that the Government have made available, does my hon. Friend think the Government should make provide funding for waking watch, for which, in some cases, constituents are being asked to pay in excess of £30,000 a month just to stay in their buildings? Without that, they would have to evacuate the building.

[Matthew Pennycook]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I agree that the costs of waking watch are absolutely staggering. Leaseholders are already paying those costs, as she makes clear, in a way that is financially unsustainable for many of them. I will pick up on that point later, not only in what I will say on the fund, but in talking about leaseholder liability and whether leaseholders are being protected in the way that has been suggested.

Finally, the scope of public funding more generally must also be revisited. It is Government guidance that is ultimately driving the need for remediation and it is simply not equitable that leaseholders in buildings over 18 metres in height, whether those buildings are covered in ACM or non-ACM cladding, are assisted by the state while those in buildings below that threshold are left to fend for themselves. The Minister must surely recognise that the Government cannot argue that height should not be the sole, or even the—