Gareth Thomas
Main Page: Gareth Thomas (Labour (Co-op) - Harrow West)Housing and Planning Bill (Eighth sitting)
Gareth Thomas Excerpts
Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
On a point of order, Sir Alan. If everything remains equal, as I understand it, we will reach clauses 56 to 61—chapter 1 of part 4—on Tuesday morning. The chapter relates to the implementation of the voluntary right-to-buy deal. I spoke to the House of Commons Library yesterday lunchtime to find out whether any more information on the pace of negotiations between the Government and the National Housing Federation on the detail of the deal had been forthcoming. At that point the Library staff were not aware of any. I understand, however, through a tweet from the Minister and from some information that the Chancellor of the Exchequer made available in his statement yesterday, that five housing associations are proceeding with the deal. Have you, Sir Alan, been made aware of whether any more information will be forthcoming to the Committee on the detail of the right-to-buy deal, to put us in a better position to scrutinise it and the part 4 clauses that relate to it on Tuesday morning?
The Chair
That is not a route for the Chair to follow. It is a matter not for me, but for the normal channels and the Chairman of Ways and Means. However, you have listed the question in Hansard and I will take it on myself to make inquiries along those lines. I will advise you at a later date. Is that okay?
The Minister for Housing and Planning (Brandon Lewis)
Further to that point of order, Sir Alan. To be helpful to the Committee, I suggest that the hon. Member for Harrow West looks at the National Housing Federation website, where the deal is published in full.
Clause 48, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 49
Recovering abandoned premises
Teresa Pearce (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)
I beg to move amendment 110, in clause 49, page 22, line 10, at end insert—
“(e) the local housing authority responds to a request by the landlord confirming that they suspect the property to be abandoned.”
This amendment would require the local housing authority to confirm that they also suspect that the property is abandoned before a landlord can recover the abandoned premises.
Part 3 of the Bill makes provision for private landlords to recover abandoned premises. We appreciate the need for some landlords to recover abandoned premises, but the proposed measures give landlords dangerous powers to evict tenants with speed and ease.
Tenancies are formal legal agreements and the Bill will give landlords the power to repossess homes from tenants without going through a court process. The turnover period for recovering abandoned premises is too short and the Bill does not provide safeguards for genuine cases of someone legitimately being away from the property, such as for a long holiday, a stay in hospital or a short period of working away.
The proposed measures will lead to further pressure on our already stretched social housing and local authority housing departments as evicted tenants turn to their local authorities after eviction. At the moment there is a timetable and a process for a local authority to help people avoid homelessness by trying to get them into another property, but the process in the Bill is too speedy and people will literally be turning up at the housing department having just been given a second letter.
As drafted, the measures go against the spirit of the Bill that we debated in our scrutiny on Tuesday, namely to crack down on rogue and criminal landlords with banning orders, the database and the fines and to drive up standards throughout the private rented sector. Instead, as they stand, the provisions create a way for some landlords to evict without recourse to the courts and with ease and speed.
Part 3 gives the impression of being put together at the last minute, without thought for the impact on existing legislation. In fact, the impact assessment, on page 43, indicates that the Government are unsure about how big the problem being dealt with even is, so we are concerned about the inclusion of the measure in the Bill. We are not alone in expressing concern.
Shelter and Crisis, two of the leading charities in the sector, released special briefings on those clauses in part 3, strongly opposing them and recommending that they be removed from the Bill completely. They were particularly concerned that vulnerable tenants could be unintentionally evicted, that tenants will be unable to challenge eviction effectively and that there is insufficient evidence that abandonment is a real problem. They also said that there is existing legal provision to deal with genuine cases of abandonment. In addition, they believe that by undermining the role of the courts in the eviction process, the changes will put more tenants at risk of homelessness.
Many representations made to the Committee in written and oral evidence noted concern about the proposals. In written evidence, Crisis highlighted:
“The Bill creates a new ‘fast-track’ eviction process for landlords to reclaim possession of a property which”
they believe
“has been abandoned”,
and that:
“There is no robust evidence to suggest that abandonment is significant or widespread”.
Crisis cited the Bill and the Government’s own impact assessment, which I just mentioned, in which landlords’ associations representing approximately 1.4 million landlords estimated that only 1% of calls to their helplines relate to abandonment. From that figure, the Government have extrapolated that only 1,750 tenancies are abandoned every year, which amounts to 0.04% of private rented households.
The Housing Law Practitioners Association also expressed concern in its written evidence, saying that the HLPA was unaware of any evidential basis suggesting the need for such a power and did not understand what was thought to be defective in existing law. Looking more closely at the legislation, the HLPA noted that the trigger rent arrears are plainly modelled on those in schedule 2 of the Housing Act 1988. If rent arrears are not paid, the landlord is already entitled to a mandatory possession order on ground 8 of the Act.
If the landlord already has a right to mandatory possession, why does he need a right to bypass the court? I would be interested to hear why the Minister believes that the clause is necessary, because it puzzles me. The HLPA also raised concerns about the reinstatement provisions, noting that if the landlord re-lets the property after recovering possession using the abandoned property route and the original tenants seek reinstatement, the court is very likely to refuse them, given that reinstatement would take effect as a concurrent tenancy but would not entitle the original tenant to resume occupation.
In addition to the written evidence, I remember clearly questioning Campbell Robb, chief executive of Shelter, in the evidence sessions. I remind the Committee of that discussion. To quote the transcript, Mr Robb mentioned
“potentially some unintended consequences of bringing”
these measures
“forward and of the lack of court oversight or local authority oversight in making sure that the proposals achieve what is wished but that they do not give a licence to some landlords to use them in a way that we would not support. I just want to put that on record.”
Mr Robb also went on to highlight the danger that,
“without that due process, certain types of landlords may use this to create evictions”
and agreed that it might
“put additional pressure on local authority housing departments by people appearing evicted without due process”.––[Official Report, Housing and Planning Public Bill Committee, 10 November 2015; c. 59, Q153-156.]
Although many have concerns about the proposals as they stand, others note that they are unnecessary. Crisis and Shelter reminded the Bill Committee in their briefing and in written evidence that there is already legal provision for cases of abandonment, in the form of the legal rule on implied surrender.
Mr Thomas
I wonder whether my hon. Friend thinks that an elderly person living alone, perhaps with early-onset Alzheimer’s, might be a suitable example for highlighting the concerns about the clause. Such a person, whose Alzheimer’s might not have been noticed, might inadvertently not pay their rent. An unscrupulous landlord would be able to exploit that fact to put that vulnerable person at risk, unless the local housing authority were aware of the situation and able to intervene to prevent the landlord from using an eviction process.
Teresa Pearce
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. That is exactly the sort of situation that I could envisage arising. We heard on Tuesday that there are 10,500 rogue landlords who are known about; I know that there are a fair number in my constituency. I hear many cases in which the landlord, rather than resort to the court, has intimidated tenants into moving out of a premises voluntarily. When the tenants go to the housing department, the housing department says, “You’ve made yourself voluntarily homeless, so we don’t have a duty to house you.” There are landlords like that out there; we know that from the discussions that we had on Tuesday.
It is from that sort of person that we seek to protect tenants. We believe that people who do not want to go to the cost and the bother of going to court will use this route, so it needs to be tightened up.
In its briefing, Crisis says that implied surrender
“is where a tenant behaves in a way that would make a landlord believe they wanted to end a tenancy such as emptying the property of all of its possessions or handing back the keys.”
Crucially, there has to be evidence of actual abandonment—evidence that the tenant has gone for good. That can be evidence from neighbours or visual evidence that all possessions have been cleared. The landlord can accept that and then legally change the locks without any court proceedings being required.
Crisis notes that, in addition to the legal rule of implied surrender, the landlord can, outside the fixed term of the tenancy, use a section 21 notice to give a tenant two months’ notice of eviction, under which they do not have to prove that the tenant is at fault. A common complaint about the section 21 route is that the court process can be slow, but if the tenant has genuinely abandoned the property, this route should be straightforward. For example, there will be no need for the landlord to go to court to seek a possession notice, because the tenant will no longer be in the property. There is no evidence to suggest that existing legal provision is ineffective in genuine cases of abandonment.
Mr Thomas
I wonder whether I can raise another example with my hon. Friend. If someone living on their own has a heart attack and is taken at a moment’s notice to hospital, they may have to spend quite a time there recovering. As a result, they may not pay their rent for a couple of months. If it is not obvious that they are still living at the premises, they may fall victim to a rogue landlord or, indeed, to any landlord who is concerned about the arrears and who is not aware that the person has been hospitalised. Is that not a further reason for the Minister to take the amendment seriously?
Teresa Pearce
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. That is exactly the type of scenario we are talking about. I do not think that reputable landlords will use the provisions to get rid of tenants they do not want or to reclaim their property, but, as we know from our discussions on Tuesday, there are landlords out there who do not act in their tenants’ best interests.
I hope the Minister will be able to comment on the rationale for these measures. As I mentioned, there are no real data to hand, and the impact assessment judges the number of households affected to be extremely small.
The measures give landlords dangerous powers to evict tenants with speed and ease. It is a puzzle why the clause is in the Bill, given that there is already a legal route for landlords to go down. That is why we have tabled amendment 110, among others, which would require the local housing authority, as an extra layer of protection, to confirm that it also suspects the property has been abandoned, before the landlord can recover it.
It is clear that we do not have a cohesive set of measures to adequately prove abandonment. One flaw is that they are open to abuse or error. Landlords could use them as they stand to evict tenants, just by writing them a couple of letters. They could also use the measures to evict someone as an act of revenge.
Mr Thomas
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton for intervening, because he prompts me to remind the Committee of my entry on the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
I put to my hon. Friend another example of someone who might be vulnerable if this provision were introduced without the additional protections she suggests. Let us suppose that someone is rightly sent to prison and has to spend a few months there, in which time they do not pay their rent and—perhaps for understandable reasons —do not make their landlord aware of where they are residing for that short period. Is there not a danger that, without additional protections, a landlord might simply go ahead and seek to evict that person, making it even more difficult for them to be rehabilitated after their spell in prison?
Teresa Pearce
There are many scenarios in which that could happen. As I have stated, I believe the majority of landlords are good and proper citizens who would not do that, but we know there is a core of rogue landlords. The Minister’s figure of 10,500 such landlords is, I think, an underestimation, because those are the ones we know about; there are plenty who we do not know about, but who we hear about it in our caseloads and surgeries. That is the reason we tabled the amendment—to try to ensure this proposal has a few safeguards. Landlords could use this measure to kick out a legitimate tenant who was away on business, in hospital or even in jail, as my hon. Friend suggested. Will the Minister outline what would happen in those situations?
What safeguards are in place for tenants if their landlord says a letter has been delivered? Will the letters have to be signed for, with recorded delivery? Many properties in my constituency have communal letterboxes, and people often do not get mail directed at them. A number of properties have external letterboxes, and it is not unusual for people to go along and steal post from those. How will the tenant be protected if the landlord says a letter has been delivered? Will it have to be signed for? What happens if a landlord says he sent a letter but the tenant never received it, or the tenant goes away for a couple of weeks and the landlord evicts them while they are away?
All the legislation requires is for the landlord to say a property is abandoned, rather than for it to actually be abandoned. It is clear that the proposals could be open to abuse. That is why we propose adding an extra layer to them through our amendment. The local housing authority would need to confirm that it also suspects a property is abandoned, which would ensure a landlord is unable to just say it is abandoned. Adding the voice of a local, respected body to the process would ensure the measures are not open to abuse.
Mr Thomas
Does my hon. Friend agree that many landlords would appreciate that additional requirement and the ability to check with a respected local body that has expertise in housing matters whether a property has been abandoned? I think most landlords would be horrified if they inadvertently evicted someone who was in hospital, having a short spell in prison or away caring for an elderly relative. Surely another argument for supporting the amendment is that it would help landlords to avoid inadvertently doing the wrong thing.
Teresa Pearce
I completely agree. The amendment would also give a heads-up to the local housing authority that there is the possibility of an eviction, enabling the authority to help that tenant into new premises and prevent them from ending up homeless.
It is estimated that these abandonments would arise on only 1,750 occasions a year, and with only 400 local authorities in the country, the amendment would be unlikely to place too much of a burden on them. It is clear that the clause needs amending if it is to work, to not be open to abuse and to be used appropriately on the rare occasions when a landlord is required to recover abandoned premises. The amendment would require the local housing authority to confirm, as an extra layer, that it also suspects that the property is abandoned before a landlord can recover the abandoned premises.
Mr Thomas
I am concerned that if the clause is agreed to and our amendment is not, we may inadvertently place an additional burden on the taxpayer when people who still need accommodation are evicted, and that the cost of homelessness might rise. New universal credit claimants will be particularly vulnerable to accruing rent arrears, as it is likely to be six weeks before their first payment. If there is a delay in the post, that could easily rise to eight weeks, which falls within the scope of an eviction under the abandonment provisions.
Grahame M. Morris
Again, my hon. Friend makes a sensible point, and I hope the Minister will reflect on it. It reinforces my point that the new mechanism does not provide substantial benefits to either party—the tenant or the landlord—and does not improve on the existing arrangements. If the Government insist on pressing ahead with the clause, there is a danger that it could be used by rogue landlords to threaten and intimidate vulnerable tenants, such as those that my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead referred to and those in ill health, who my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West referred to. At the very least, the Government should offer the additional safeguards that are proposed in our amendment.
Mr Thomas
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate, Sir Alan. I hope the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton is tempted to catch your eye to say a little more in this debate. He makes a broadly reasonable point in saying that there needs to be a balance in law between the rights of the tenant and the rights of the landlord. However, I struggle to understand why he thinks there is not a sufficient balance in law at the moment. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bootle alluded to, there are already legal provisions to deal with tenants who get into substantial rent arrears and for cases of abandonment, and there is the legal rule of implied surrender. It is difficult, reflecting on the evidence sittings and all the submissions to the Bill Committee, to see what evidence there is to justify all the additional powers for landlords, which, as many hon. Members have suggested, could cause problems for vulnerable citizens.
I accept that the Government have gone some way to address those concerns with amendments 116 to 126. Nevertheless, I share the concern of my hon. Friends the Members for Erith and Thamesmead, for Easington and for Bootle that those amendments do not go quite far enough to deal with concerns about vulnerability.
A case in my constituency involved a woman who was a teaching assistant. She got into rent arrears because of problems with housing benefit and, worried about her housing situation, she chose, wrongly, not to answer her mail. As a result, her problems got worse. She was intimidated by the financial position that she was in. I worry that the provisions could make it easier to evict a person in that case than to help her sort out her finances.
Peter Dowd
The Minister proposes to amend clause 51 so that a third notice must be given. Does my hon. Friend agree that a third notice is fine, but that it would take the process virtually to the three-month period that would make it possible to get a section 21 eviction? Effectively, it would take the same time, but without recourse to law. That seems a bit inappropriate.
Mr Thomas
My hon. Friend makes a good point. If the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton will forgive me, that is another reason why it would be good to hear his experience about why the additional provisions, albeit with the Government amendments, are necessary. We will no doubt hear from the Minister in due course.
Part of my concern is that tenants evicted under the new provisions will struggle to challenge their evictions. I asked on Tuesday about legal aid for someone wanting to make sure a rent repayment order would be available, and the Minister was going to reflect on that. Will he also reflect on whether legal aid will be available to a tenant who wants to challenge an eviction under the new provisions?
I am concerned that the clauses and Government amendments could lead to further illegal evictions, and part of the reason for that is that there are very few successful prosecutions at the moment for unlawful eviction by landlords. In 2011 there were only 13. The brutal truth is that illegal evictions are rarely investigated, and few landlords are prosecuted.
There are a number of reasons for that. There have been substantial cuts to many of the tenancy relations teams in housing associations, which have traditionally carried out that function—if, indeed, they still exist. Police forces often think that illegal eviction is a civil matter, so it is quite rare that they investigate. For someone who has been evicted illegally and is now homeless, finding accommodation is a much more urgent priority than launching a prosecution.
My hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead is right to ask for an additional check and balance before a landlord can take action under the provisions. The opportunity to go and ask a local housing authority whether it shares the view that a property has been abandoned is a check strongly worthy of consideration.
Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman made an interesting point that police forces often think that an illegal eviction is a civil matter. If such an eviction is actually a criminal matter subject to prosecution, does he agree that it ought to be relatively simple for the Government to make it clear to police forces that it is a criminal matter and should be dealt with as part of their responsibilities to protect the public from crime?
Mr Thomas
I am tempted to think that it ought to be relatively simple for Ministers to write to police forces urging them to check things carefully. If the Minister were to agree to that, I would certainly welcome it. I encourage the hon. Member for South Norfolk to consider the whole piece and all the reasons why it is unlikely that landlords who pursue unlawful evictions will be taken to task. The police issue is one thing, but I alluded to a series of other issues that prompt concern about the Bill’s clauses, albeit there are potential amendments from the Minister.
Peter Dowd
Does my hon. Friend agree that we are in the territory of a person possibly being declared de facto homeless vicariously through three letters coming through their door? The person could in effect become homeless not because they want to or have caused it, but because someone has sent three letters. They would then face the challenge of finding alternative accommodation.
Mr Thomas
My hon. Friend makes a good point, and it will be useful to hear from the Minister on that.
Returning to a point I made in an intervention, the vast majority of landlords are not large buy-to-let companies. They are often individuals or families with just one or two properties who want to do the right thing by their tenants. The opportunity to talk to a body before taking a view that abandonment has happened gives them an additional safeguard and provides an additional opportunity for them to satisfy themselves that they are not making somebody homeless inadvertently. The amendment is pro-good-landlord just as much as it is anti-rogue-landlord, as my hon. Friend suggested.
I am sorry that the hon. Member for Peterborough is not in his place, because he very much—
Mr Thomas
I apologise to the hon. Gentleman. It is good to have him here. Indeed, he has arrived in time to allow me to draw his attention once again to the examples of rogue landlords that I mentioned on Tuesday. Mr Antoniades, Mr Ippolito, Stanley John Rodgers, Zuo Jun He, Andrew Panayi, Katia Goremsandu, and Ishak Hussein have all been convicted of appalling behaviour. One suspects that they are looking at the abandonment provisions in the Bill—the Minister has proposed amendments—and thinking that they are a further weapon in their armoury, if they need it, when behaving badly towards tenants for not doing exactly what they want in the time that they want them to do it.
I urge the Minister to understand the spirit with which my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead tabled the amendment, which is pro-good-landlord and anti-rogue-landlord and will strengthen the Bill. I hope the Minister embraces it.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Marcus Jones)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once again, Sir Alan. We have had a full debate with a number of points raised by hon. Members on both sides. I will do my best to respond to as many of them as I can.
The amendment would require a landlord to obtain confirmation from the relevant local housing authority that a property had been abandoned before they could serve a notice on the tenant to bring an assured shorthold tenancy to an end and repossess the property. We have introduced a procedure for dealing with abandoned premises that will allow a landlord to recover a property that has been abandoned without the need to obtain a court order. We have introduced safeguards to ensure that a landlord can use the process only in circumstances in which a tenant has genuinely abandoned the property.
Mr Jones
I will make some more progress first. The landlord can recover a property only when warning notices have been served on the tenant. The first warning notice would not in practice be able to be served unless at least four consecutive weeks’ rent is unpaid. The second warning notice may be served only when at least eight consecutive weeks’ rent is unpaid. That second warning notice must be given at least two weeks, and no more than four weeks, after the first warning notice. Each warning notice must state that the landlord believes that the premises have been abandoned and that the tenant or named occupier must respond in writing before a specified date, which must be at least eight weeks after the first warning notice is given, if the premises have not been abandoned.
The landlord proposes to bring the tenancy to an end if either the tenant or a named occupier responds in writing before that date. Finally, if the tenancy has been brought to an end using the abandonment procedure, where a tenant has a good reason for failing to respond to the warning notices they may be able to apply to the county court for an order reinstating the tenancy.
It is clear that landlords must go through a lengthy and detailed process before they can regard a property as being abandoned. In addition to the requirement that at least eight consecutive weeks’ rent remains unpaid, they must also serve a series of warning notices on that tenant and, where applicable, any other named occupiers.
Mr Jones
I will in a moment. It would be disproportionate and an unnecessary extra burden on local authorities to impose the additional requirement that a local housing authority must also confirm that a property has, in their view, been abandoned. It may also be difficult for a local authority to determine whether a property has in fact been abandoned. To require them to do so could put them in an extremely difficult position.
Mr Thomas
Will the Minister set out a little more on the general rationale for the provisions? What evidence is there that abandonment is such a huge problem that all those provisions are needed? I do not think we heard any evidence that suggests a problem on the scale merited by the effort gone to by Ministers and civil servants with the clauses.
Mr Jones
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. As Labour Front Benchers have set out, there are 1,750 such cases a year and we need put that in context. He and Labour Members want protection for vulnerable people. I agree with that and I will go into more detail on how we will protect them, but there is also a significant number of vulnerable people who need to be housed. When there are abandoned premises that landlords cannot let, that reduces the stock of accommodation available to get those vulnerable people into settled accommodation.
Mr Jones
That brings me nicely to the points that were made about the section 21 notice, which landlords can use to retake possession of a property. It is important to point out that to recover possession under section 21, the landlord would need to obtain a possession order from the court, as has been pointed out, which would obviously involve additional time and the additional cost of going to court.
We need to bear it in mind that the Bill is about bringing forward proportionate measures to protect tenants. The golden thread running through all the measures on the private rented sector is that we are trying to improve the tenant’s lot and tenant protection. At the same time, however, there is a balance between tenant protection and the needs of the landlord—the person who invests in property to house people. The hon. Gentleman and the Labour party need to consider that the measures are a proportionate way to redress that balance, particularly where tenants are clearly not paying their rent and not living at the property.
Mr Jones
It is clear that a landlord who knows the abandonment procedure will know they are going beyond the letter and spirit of the provisions if they do what the hon. Gentleman suggests. As we have identified, there is legislation in place, in particular the 1977 Act, which protects people in that sense.
As for the suggestion that the implied surrender process means that abandonment provisions are not required, there is an existing common-law route of implied surrender, but it can be used only where a landlord is clear that the tenant has definitely left the property—for example, when they have removed all their possessions and returned the keys to the property. Our abandonment procedure will help landlords where a tenant suddenly disappears and stops paying rent by providing a process for landlords to confirm whether the property has actually been abandoned.
That brings me to the Protection from Eviction Act 1977. Any landlord who abuses the process we are introducing by not giving proper warning and repossessing the property when they know that it has not been abandoned will be liable to prosecution under the 1977 Act. Again, the prosecuting authority will usually be the local housing authority, and the tenant can apply to the county court for damages.
Mr Jones
The hon. Gentleman should recognise that action under the 1977 Act would be a criminal process, and would generally be driven by the local authority with responsibility for enforcing that legislation because it would be in a stronger position to do that than a potentially vulnerable tenant who had just been evicted illegally. The second route for the tenant, on the basis of the contract between the tenant and the landlord, would be a civil legal matter. To my knowledge, under both the current legal aid system and that operated by the previous Government, there was no provision for people to receive legal aid support for such civil matters. I hope that answers the hon. Gentleman’s question sufficiently.