Graham P Jones
Main Page: Graham P Jones (Labour - Hyndburn)Private Rented Sector
Graham P Jones Excerpts(10 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Nick Boles
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her intervention, as it is what I think is known as a soft ball, because this Government have of course done a great deal more than previous Governments to pull institutional investment into this sector. We have already identified in excess of £10 billion of equity that people are looking to invest in this sector. We have a £1 billion Build to Rent fund. We have £3 billion of guarantees for the private rented sector. The precise point here is that we will have some chance of pulling institutional long-term investment into higher-quality rental property if such investors have confidence that the rules of that market are not going to suddenly change and they are not going to suddenly find themselves being faced with unpredictable costs and capped rents. That is how we get institutional investment in, and it is precisely the opposite of what the Labour party is proposing.
Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)
The Minister is making a fundamental point: he is saying that rents are indexed to capital values. Is that correct?
Nick Boles
I am not saying anything as complicated as that. I am a bear of a fairly simple brain, and I am simply saying that if someone cannot control their costs and is faced with capped or controlled revenues, that is a very risky environment and there are lots of other places where they can put their money, and we will see rental property returning to how it was until the housing legislation was changed: falling as a contributor to our economy.
Mr Mark Prisk (Hertford and Stortford) (Con)
May I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests?
Let me start by saying that I strongly believe in both a bigger and better private rented sector. As with the housing market as a whole, as we heard from the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson), we need more homes in this sector and more homes to rent. That means securing substantial private investment into the sector, for the long term. As the Select Committee found, increasing supply is good not only for the market as a whole, but for tenants, as it gives them, finally, the opportunity to choose and that helps us to make sure that bad and mediocre landlords raise their game. Therefore, the argument for increasing supply is not just an economic one; it is a social argument on behalf of the existing tenants in the marketplace. That is why the Government were right in taking on and fully implementing the findings of the Montague report.
The hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) asked what the Government were doing to get institutional investors in, so I should mention the £1 billion Build to Rent fund and the up to £11 billion in housing guarantees. They are crucial, not just because they involve large sums, but because they are long-term commitments to a sector that needs them. May I say to my former colleagues on the Front Bench that we could speed up the due diligence process on the Build to Rent fund? I have raised the issue with Ministers before, but if we are to get these homes under construction, we might speed up that process. I am sure that the Minister replying to this debate will want to set out where the Homes and Communities Agency has got to on this, because I know he shares my ambition to get those homes under way.
The Labour party is in danger of cutting off the very investment it claims it wants. The hopeless muddle—I am being polite—around the announcements from its leader’s office on rents caused many investors real alarm. There are responsible long-term institutional investors who want to invest and provide the quality of home and the longer leases that the Labour party has rightly been calling for, but by muddling rent indexation with rent controls and by part of its leadership playing to the gallery, the Labour party has left a large question mark over its housing policy. If, heaven forfend, we were to find next May that we had a Labour Government, that party and its Front-Bench team—I think they know this, given their chuntering—would need to clear up the muddle or they simply would not get the necessary investment and therefore the necessary supply.
Labour’s policy for a national register of landlords is just a gimmick. As we have seen in Scotland, such a policy would have little, if any, impact on standards, but we would see a rise in rents. The Labour Government checked what a national register would cost: it would be £300 million. Who would pay it? Would it be the landlords? No, it would be the tenants.
Graham Jones
Does the hon. Gentleman understand how long it takes local authorities, including his, to find out who a private landlord is and how much money would be saved by knowing who the landlord was through a register?
Mr Prisk
There is a case for registers in individual local authorities but, as the Select Committee agreed, a national register applied on a rigid basis is not the answer.
On standards in the sector as a whole, there is a case for a more professional rented sector. As several hon. Members have said, a minority of landlords and letting agents provide what is, at best, a shoddy service; in some cases, they flout the law and in others they have a wanton disregard for tenants’ safety. More can be done, and I encourage the Minister to focus on houses in multiple occupation. That subsector is the source of some of the worst practices, as hon. Members may know from their constituents, and often people on the lowest incomes and students are caught in it. We have legal powers in place to deal with this, but perhaps a little elbow grease from Ministers, a little Whitehall direction, and a little support and encouragement from local councils could make a real difference. Let me highlight one aspect of this issue. We need to look not just at the urban, larger HMOs in places such as Headingley in Leeds, but at some of the smaller HMOs—the two-storey houses. I am talking about the ones where, as I have discovered in the fens, HMOs are serving seasonal workers and are very often the source of dreadful practices and wider criminality.
On the letting agents issue, which the Opposition have flagged up in their motion, I am proud that it is this Government who are giving tenants proper powers of redress. The ombudsman scheme, backed by a clear code of practice, is long overdue and it will enable us to start to drive up standards of service. Let me remind the House that when in government the Labour party spoke against and voted against those redress measures for tenants. This House needs to remind not only itself but tenants whom we serve that that is where the Labour party stood for 13 years—it refused to support additional redress for tenants—and the party should be ashamed of that record.
Labour’s proposals on banning fees are well intentioned, because we have seen some dreadful practices, but the measures do not deal with the root cause of the practice among letting agents; what they would do is help to tackle one symptom. As questioning from my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North (Nick de Bois) highlighted, Labour’s proposals contain nothing to prevent agents from then charging the landlords instead, which will lead to higher rents. So, by the back door, a well-intentioned piece of legislation would lead to an unintended consequence that costs tenants more. It is a very familiar story with the Labour party. What we need is a sector-wide agreement, one that sets higher standards for the quality of the homes provided, the type of leases offered and the level of customer service that tenants can expect. That is the way forward. We want a comprehensive approach and not a quick fix.
We have a great opportunity to put in place permanently a genuine and stable private rented market. For too long, this House has tended to divide blue and red on the issue of tenure. It is, “Home ownership is perfect” or “Social housing is perfect.” We need to move on and recognise that we need more homes to rent, more subsidised homes to rent and more homes to own. Unless we focus on supply and play the game in terms of ensuring that the whole market works, we will fail. A modern economy needs a dynamic, open and competitive private rented sector, and it needs tenants who can rely on what is a professional standard. It should be a market in which the customer, and not the provider, leads.
We are, as a Government, making good progress. The policy direction is right, but I say to Members on both Front Benches that there is more that can be done.
Jackie Doyle-Price
It is shocking that Thurrock council is letting down its tenants.
Graham Jones
Surely the hon. Lady should be doing something about that. There is a decent home standard for socially rented properties, and they should be brought up to that standard. The private rented sector, of course, has no quality conditions laid on it.
Jackie Doyle-Price
I am not the local council, but if I were, I would be doing something about it. Let me give the hon. Gentleman some examples. A row of four terraced houses in Tilbury is subsiding. One of the tenants has been on the waiting list to be rehoused for nine years. The council is still putting people in those properties. There is a flat from which someone was rehoused because it was riddled with damp, only for a new tenant to come to me two months later about the same property because it had not been treated. The post-1940 housing stock in my constituency has poorly installed central heating and double glazing units, which have led to real problems of decay. Yes, the previous Government did introduce a decent housing initiative, but it is useless if councils do not take advantage of it. I am doing my best to tell the council what its obligations are to its tenants. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman could do the same. It might listen to him as it is a Labour council.
The real point is that some tenants suffer seriously life-threatening illnesses. Where properties are infected with damp and mould, which happens in poorly ventilated properties with cheap double-glazing, we see a rise in illnesses such as asthma. I also want to mention an illness that many hon. Members may not have heard of, aspergillus. Where tenants inhale mould in infected properties, the mould can start to invade their lungs. That condition can be terminal, and I am sorry to advise the House that in my constituency I have a number of cases of people with aspergillus, contracted from the houses in which they live. One lady who suffered from respiratory failure was not allowed home by hospital staff because they recognised that it was her living environment that was killing her—and, yes, that was a council house. We must all be vigilant and remind councils of their obligations in this regard.
I very much welcome the efforts made by Government to educate tenants about their rights, and we must do more, because it is the voice of the consumer that will make landlords of all types deliver on their obligations. We can do a lot more in this place to highlight good and bad practice, and we should name and shame the particularly bad cases. While there are powers for councils to take action against rogue landlords, the real weakness in the current system is that we cannot make them do so. I say to the Minister that we really need to look at this.
We can take action to remind private landlords of their obligations to their tenants and remind tenants of what they can expect from their landlords, but the real hole in the system is the obligations of council landlords to their tenants and how we force them to act. We need to look at toughening up the powers of the ombudsman or developing a charter so that we can tell tenants what they can expect from their council landlords. However, let us not pretend, as Labour Members do, that the problem with our housing is always rogue private landlords; it is much worse than that. Our biggest problem is a failure to invest adequately in supply, and there is a serious problem with the quality of a lot of our housing stock. We should stop playing politics and actually get some houses built.
Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con)
The positive thing about the debate so far is that Members on both sides of the House want to tackle the problem of a housing shortage and we all recognise that supply is one of the key issues in doing so. Until shorthold tenancies were introduced in the Housing Act 1988, there was almost no private rented sector in this country. In fact, rent controls contributed to the collapse in the private rented sector from more than 55% of households in 1939 to just 8% in the 1980s, and I believe the figure dropped to 7% in the early 1990s.
Graham Jones
The hon. Gentleman makes the point that the private rented sector fell during that period, but so did the increase in the supply of social housing. The number of people on the social housing waiting list was not that significant in those days, so there was not exactly a surplus of tenants, but there was a much larger social rented sector.
Stephen McPartland
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point, but Library figures show that it has taken almost 30 years for the figure to increase to 16.5%. His point that there was no demand then but that, all of a sudden, there is now probably does not hold water.
An estimated 89% of landlords are private individuals with one or two properties, which are, in effect, their pension funds. They are, in the main, responsible and proactive people, such as my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (John Stevenson), who will keep his tenant in place for as long as he pays the rent on time, as has happened for a number of years.
Caroline Lucas
I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman. I also want to add my support to the many other hon. Members who have talked about the scandal of agents not allowing people on benefits to rent properties. That is absolutely despicable.
We need a national register of landlords so that we can better protect tenants. That would also be good for the landlords out there who are not ripping people off. There are good landlords, and their efforts are tainted by those rogue landlords who are using the housing crisis as a way to make a fast buck. A national register would also help us to implement the minimum energy efficiency standard for private rented homes, which is essential to protect our most vulnerable citizens.
Hon. Members will be aware of early-day motion 95, which reminds the House that the Energy Act 2011 placed a duty on the Government to introduce a minimum energy efficiency standard for the private rented sector by April 2018. The regulations have been significantly delayed, which is totally unacceptable and shows the lack of priority being given to this issue. Ministers must also ensure that the regulations are made clear and enforceable by specifying band E as the minimum standard in all cases and by keeping exemptions to an absolute minimum. People looking for somewhere to rent need to know who they can trust and to be guaranteed minimum standards to ensure that properties are of high quality, safe and efficient.
It must be made easier for families and individuals to get secure longer-term five-year and 10-year tenancies. The norm of short-term contracts leaves private rented sector tenants without security in their homes, and at risk of eviction and unfair rent increases. That volatility is particularly harmful for families with children, who often have to move schools as a result. Shelter has done some excellent research in this area. Longer-term renting could work better for both renters and landlords, as the latter could reduce void periods and expensive re-letting costs. It really is high time that the Government took steps to ensure that people can get five-year stable rental contracts, if that is what they want.
One local resident told me of her heartbreak at being given one month’s notice to leave the flat she had hoped to stay in for a few years, even though being given notice in that way was technically against the law. She had spent time planting strawberries in hanging baskets on the fire escape, re-grouting the old tiles in the bathroom and hanging pictures. She wanted that place to be her home, and I think she deserves better. That is why I have tabled an amendment to today’s motion to give good tenants the choice of a five-year stable rental contract as standard. Five years as standard is what Shelter and the campaign group Generation Rent are rightly calling for, and I share their view on that.
One of the reasons why the private rented sector is expanding and rents are soaring is the decimation of our social housing stock through the right-to-buy programme. Enormous, unjustified discounts and the failure to replace the stock that was flogged off cheap have a large part to play in our current housing crisis. To begin to make a dent in our long-term housing crisis we must address the lack of affordable homes, too. One of the biggest cuts in Government funding during this Parliament has been the 60% cut in funds for social housing, which has pushed even more people into expensive, insecure places in the private rented sector.
This is a problem caused by successive Governments, who have simply not built enough houses, particularly affordable ones. A recent House of Commons Library note shows a long-term steep decline in house building in England in the past 35 years. Nearly 307,000 homes were built across all tenures in England in 1969-70, but the number fell to just over 107,000 in 2012-13. There was a minor increase in housing association building over that period, although it amounted to less than 15,000 dwellings. What is most striking is that the steepest decline was in the building of council houses, which fell from 135,000 to 1,360 over the same period.
My amendment seeks to remedy this scandalous missed opportunity with a call to start building council homes again. Done well, council housing works. It gives affordability and security of tenure. In 1980, under the Thatcher right-to-buy legislation, council housing stock was decimated and we were left with the scandalous situation of landlords receiving huge pay-outs in housing benefit for properties that were sold off cheap at the taxpayers’ expense. I want a real central Government commitment to build council housing, so that individuals and families can stay in Brighton and Hove without being at the mercy of rip-off landlords, and so that they can put down roots and not be forced to move their children from school to school.
We need fully to lift the cap on local authority borrowing to allow councils to build new council houses. Councils are bound by prudential borrowing rules anyway, so the cap is unnecessary; it is just stifling the building of local authority homes. This measure needs to be bolstered by direct capital investment to allow for a mass programme of sustainable, warm council housing. We urgently need a commitment from the Government to replace all affordable homes lost through right-to-buy policies. Such a commitment was another candidate for inclusion in the housing Bill that was so conspicuously absent from this Government’s programme, which is in large part sleepwalking us towards the general election.
Updating our housing infrastructure and giving people a way out of the cripplingly expensive private rented sector could also be a win-win. No one is suggesting that that is a silver bullet, but if we lifted the restrictions and allowed councils to borrow to build homes, and if they started to build on the necessary scale, we could start to pull people out of housing emergency. We could stop the expensive and distressing knock-on problems that bad housing creates, while at the same time creating a major boost to the provision of skilled jobs.
Generation Rent is getting bigger and being squeezed harder. That is why I support the call for smart rent controls, which would mean that rents could not increase by more than the rate of inflation. I am also calling in my amendment for a living rent commission. Excellent work has been done by the living wage commission, albeit not under the initiative of the Government. The Government need to follow that lead and do some work to determine what a living rent would really look like. We must have an official benchmark for fair rent levels and, to get that, we need major official but independent research into what a living rent would be and how it could be achieved. A commission would look at whether there were ways to bring rent levels into line with the basic cost of living, and take into account the impact on, for example, landlords’ ability to pay their mortgages.
Caroline Lucas
I am indeed suggesting that we should look at stock condition as well.
A living rent commission could learn a lot from the living wage commission. It could set out how much a living rent might be, so that landlords could opt in, just as employers have opted into paying the living wage. More broadly, I would be interested to hear what other hon. Members thought about the need for a royal commission on housing, with a strong focus on the private rented sector. I do not advocate that lightly, and I know that royal commissions happen only rarely, but this is arguably an issue of such importance that such a move should be considered. Housing policy is central to health and well-being and to our economy. Sky-high rents are a barometer of housing policy failure, which is why we need a living rent commission.
Caroline Lucas
I am sorry, but no. Other people are waiting to speak.
There is still time for Ministers to admit that they have got this badly wrong, and to act on solutions to our housing crisis that would help people trapped in the private rented sector, tackle health inequality and disadvantage, create skilled jobs and, crucially, provide stable tenancies at rents that people really can afford.
Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)
In the short time left, I want to address a couple of points that seem to be central to the argument from Government Members: that rent controls have destroyed the private sector over the past 50 years; that rents have not risen recently; and that there is no need for any of the proposals from Opposition Members and the shadow Minister.
I shall deal first with the claim that the private rented sector was destroyed by rent controls. I remember my great granddad living in a rented property, as many people did on Grange lane in Accrington, but as in many areas and cities across the country, his house was demolished under the post-war clearance scheme, and he was moved into social housing—a bungalow. Many thousands of people were moved out of private rented accommodation; it was simply slum clearance. The properties were not fit to live in, so in the post-war period, people were moved to new builds, which, in those days, only local authorities could build. The transition of people from the private rented sector pre-war to social housing post-war, and the reduction in the percentage of people in the private rented sector, was primarily down to slum clearance and the expansive building of social housing by local authorities. It was not the post-war rent controls that destroyed the private rented sector, but the quality of the housing stock, and that still applies today. With the rise of the private rented sector, we see a deterioration in the quality of the housing stock, which leads us, in a roundabout way, to the proposals from the Opposition Front-Bench team, which I welcome.
I also want to take on the claim that rents have not risen. I think the Minister said that earlier, but when I intervened on him, he quickly reeled back from that. He made it clear that the reason rents have not risen is that they are indexed to the capital value of property. He said that people have a choice between realising their assets in property or investing elsewhere. The reason rents have not risen that much is that the value of properties has not risen. The housing market has been stagnating for some time, which caps rents, because naturally if someone has £100,000 in property, they will look for where they can get the best value, and if they can get it elsewhere, they will shift that investment. So rents are inextricably indexed to capital values, and when we see house prices rise, we will see rents rise, as we are now seeing in London. The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), who is no longer in her place, said that in Brighton rents and house values are twice the national average, which clearly made the point about indexation.
Neither claim is true, therefore, which is why we need to do what my Labour colleagues have proposed: to put in place rent controls, to cap rents and to provide assurance to tenants. As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) said, we cannot have young children and families being put on short-term tenancies and then being moved out. It destroys children’s education and it destroys the lives of families. We have to deal with that, so longer-term tenancies are also vital.
It is claimed that the public can get redress, but they cannot. We have seen legal aid cuts to housing, and it is very difficult for people in the private rented sector to get any form of redress. Our local citizens advice bureaux have seen a reduction in staff numbers, the so-called big society is shrinking rapidly and people are finding it increasingly hard to get redress on housing issues. It is not as easy as is made out—if someone has a housing problem with a landlord, everything will be all right because they can get legal redress. Actually, I do not think that that was possible at the start of this Government, and the situation has only been made far more difficult by changes to government funding.
It is said that there is choice and that private landlords do their best. The problem with the private rented sector in many areas, including mine, is the stock condition. No matter how many landlords or what type of landlord, 20% of properties in my area have category 1 hazards and 40% have category 2 hazards. Landlords are operating in a very difficult environment and with very poor housing stock, and they are not improving that housing stock. That is an issue, and choice does not come into it when there is an endemic problem of stock condition. The problem needs to be addressed in other ways. We cannot just say there is choice out there.
Finally, I return to the housing stock in Hyndburn. Post-war and pre-war, roughly one third of the housing stock was rented, and the same is true today. All we have seen is a shift between the different rental types of social housing and the private rented sector. That reinforces the point that one third of people in my constituency will always want to rent and that two thirds will always be owner occupiers. That is likely to carry on. It is a question of how we provide the one third of accommodation that needs to be rented. It is not about saying the private rented sector is better than the social rented sector. Given the time, I shall sit down and allow the Front-Bench speakers to wind up the debate.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Stephen Williams)
I welcome the opportunity to debate an incredibly important issue, and to do so in a largely good-natured and constructive way, as the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) has just done. She showed real passion on behalf of her constituents, as she was quite entitled to do. I shall return to that shortly, but first let me also welcome the Labour party’s new-found interest in this issue, which they have developed four years after entering into opposition and, perhaps more significantly, 17 years after entering into government. They had a 13-year window of opportunity in which to tackle all the issues raised in their motion, along with all the additional issues that have been raised by Labour Members today, but they did not take that opportunity.
This coalition Government recognise that the private rented sector is playing an increasingly important role in the housing market. It has doubled to serve more than 3.8 million households, and many of those people value the flexibility that it offers them and choose, positively, to live in it. That is especially true of young people. The phrase “Generation Rent” was used by a number of speakers, including my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert). I have spoken on a platform with the excellent people who are organising the Generation Rent campaign, and I recognise that the position of young people will be a serious issue in the run-up to the general election. I am proud of the fact that the Government are tackling many of the problems identified by that group and by other campaigning groups such as the National Union of Students.
The status of the private rented sector is extremely important, and it is actually performing very well. As I said earlier, the supply of private rented housing has grown to serve nearly 4 million people. As many Members have pointed out, during the current Parliament rents have increased more slowly than inflation, by an average of 1% a year. Overall, the quality of accommodation in the sector, which has been mentioned several times today, has improved. It is more energy-efficient, and there are fewer non-decent homes than in the past. The satisfaction levels reported by tenants themselves are high: 83% of tenants are satisfied, according to the most recent surveys. That is a higher percentage than reported following similar surveys of the public sector. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price): I too find, as a constituency Member, that many constituents come to me—sadly—with problems relating to the public sector.
The vast majority of people in the private rented sector move of their own volition. That is an aspect of the flexibility that the sector provides people, particularly during the early stages of their lives. I went through exactly that process myself. When I graduated from Bristol university, I spent one year in a one-room bedsit. I then spent three years in an attic; I had my own kitchen but had to share a bathroom. When I could afford it, I rented a one-bedroom flat, and then, when I could afford it, I entered the housing market.
Some Opposition Members will have had rather different social experiences. Nevertheless, we recognise that there are challenges that we need to tackle. The biggest challenge of all was mentioned by several Members. As we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr Prisk), the former Housing Minister, we need to expand supply in this sector and, indeed, in all other sectors. We need to build more. The hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) acknowledged that the Labour party needs to have a good look at its past record, although perhaps, belatedly, it is learning some lessons in this regard.
We also need to look at the professional status of landlords and ensure that there is good management practice. We need to tackle rogue landlords, while not penalising the vast majority who provide a good service for their tenants. We need to make letting agents’ fees more transparent, and we need to meet the growing demand from families for longer tenancies. Those are the challenges, and the Government are taking action to meet them all.
We want the private rented sector to grow. We want more purpose-built accommodation in the sector, and we want it to attract institutional investment. We want more large-scale, professionally managed, high-quality, well-designed accommodation. My hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford asked what had happened to the £1 billion Build to Rent scheme that he launched when he was Housing Minister. We believe that we are still on course to deliver 10,000 new units by 2015, and 16 projects are already under way. Due diligence is being done by the Homes and Communities Agency, and we hope to make further announcements soon.
We need regulation—smart regulation—only when it is appropriate. We do not want to adopt a blanket approach that would deter investment, add to cost pressures and increase rents. We want to crack down on rogue landlords but not to add to the burdens on ordinary landlords, such as the hon. Member for West Ham, who I am sure are providing a decent service.
Local authorities have a critical role in the sector, and we expect them to use the powers that are available to them to tackle the bad practice that sadly exists. Last year, we announced that £6.7 million would be made available to local authorities that suffer particularly complex problems with rogue landlords. We have provided £125,000 to Leeds city council to tackle the problems that it has identified. I am glad that the shadow Minister who wound up for the Opposition mentioned the problems in her constituency of West Ham. I am sure that she will want to thank the Government for the fact that they have provided £1 million to Mayor Wales in her borough to deal with the problems there—far and away the biggest investment we have made out of the £6.7 million.
Stephen Williams
I will take only one intervention, as I am up against the buffers.
Graham Jones
The Minister talks about rogue landlords. Can he tell us what specific legislation exists to deal with rogue landlords who manage housing stock that is in a poor condition?
Stephen Williams
There is a whole suite of legislation that local authorities should be using. The basic duty is to provide accommodation that is in a fit and proper state to be let. That covers all sorts of things, including electrical safety. That is why we have provided these resources to local authorities. The powers are there. Where there are particular problems, we have given the resources to deal with them. Already once in this Parliament, in 2012, we updated the guidance—I am answering the hon. Gentleman’s question—to local authorities and we will update it again this year, so that everyone is clear what powers are available to deal with and prosecute, if necessary, rogue landlords. We have removed the cap on the £5,000 fine, so that if local authorities find that there are problems, magistrates have the freedom to ensure that they can issue the strongest possible penalties to root out bad practice in the sector.
On letting agents, we have already announced that they will be required to join an ombudsman scheme. In April, we approved three schemes. Secondary legislation is going through to ensure that all letting and property management agents belong to such a scheme. Just a couple of weeks ago, we published the “How to rent” guide to empower tenants with better information, so that they know their rights. That publication has been warmly received in the sector. We are working, genuinely, with the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors to update the code of practice on that area.
Rent control was mentioned several times. Earlier this year, the shadow housing Minister, the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) said to Cathy Newman on “Channel 4 News”:
“Rent controls are not going to work in practice.”
I assume that she has changed her mind since that time.