Renters’ Rights Bill

Graham Stuart Excerpts

Tuesday 14th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Smith]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, and that is a perfect example of one of the unintended consequences that I do not believe have been put in deliberately but are something that we might see as a result of the Bill. Other issues include accidental landlords—those who did not intend to be landlords and are not large portfolio holders—and small landlords, and we have already heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner about the challenge they face regarding economic drivers and the risk of the market shrinking. We talked a lot about that on Second Reading, but ultimately landlords are leaving the market, and if there are fewer homes for people to rent, we are in a worse situation.

I support new clause 20, which stands in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner. I believe a review of the Bill’s impact on the housing market after a year is important to ensure that we make it even better than it already is, and to address those unintended consequences. We can all agree that is important, given the challenges we have already heard about regarding the long housing waiting lists and the homelessness rife across our country. It is also important to listen to landlords.

In particular, I draw attention to some of the reasons why new clause 20 is so important. Plymouth Access to Housing, known as PATH, is a key player in tackling homelessness in my constituency, and it works especially with those who are harder to place into accommodation. It has rightly said that it supports the Bill in principle—as we have heard, the Opposition support large parts of it too—but in a buoyant private rental market. It is concerned that it is not buoyant, so there is already a challenge. That is why a review would be important. PATH also says that it has received funding in the past to support landlords to stay in the private rented sector. What plans does the Minister have, perhaps outside of this Bill, to ensure that such organisations, in which some Members present today have worked, might be able to mitigate the impact of some of those future challenges?

The South West Landlords Association, which I have mentioned, would benefit from new clause 20, because it would allow for an assessment of a provision that essentially amounts to a doubling of the amount of rent arrears that can be accrued and of the notice required for possession before a landlord can get somebody out of their property. Landlords are particularly concerned about that, for the financial reasons we have already set out. If they have to wait for three months of arrears and then another month’s notice before they can remove someone from their property when they have not been paying rent, that has a massive impact on small landlords, and on those accidental landlords in particular—that is nearly half a year of income they would lose. Ultimately, it is the luck of the draw. We do not know in advance how good tenants will be. If someone has an excellent tenant, it is not a problem, but with a bad tenant it is not so good.

[Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. Does she agree that, fundamentally, the only way to secure the rights of tenants is to ensure the buoyant rental market that she is talking about, where landlords want to enter and invest in it? They are then competing for tenants in the market, which is the biggest and most powerful force of all. That will drive decent behaviour towards tenants, and without that, landlords cannot gain and retain tenants.

[Rebecca Smith]

I appreciate the point that my right hon. Friend makes. I agree that the market is important, but I also appreciate that there are some whom the market has failed. We have to find a situation where those who are not looked after by their landlords can receive support, but, as I have already said, my concern is that the Bill goes too far in the opposite direction.

[Graham Stuart]

With the freedom of being on the Back Benches, I can say that the last Conservative Government got this wrong. When they stopped landlords being able to offset the interest payments on the mortgage for that commercial asset against their income, it was one step among many that reduced the number of landlords coming into the market. Each step along the way, instead of seeking to strengthen the market, successive Governments—Conservative then, and the process is bound to be completed by Labour now—moved against landlords to make it a less and less investable asset. Ultimately, those who lose out most are tenants.

[Rebecca Smith]

I agree with my right hon. Friend that ultimately tenants are at risk of losing out if there are no properties left in the market. That leads me on to my next point and one of the other reasons why an assessment would be useful in the light of new clause 20. We heard in Committee that rural landlords are particularly concerned. According to the Country Land and Business Association, 44% of landlords are planning to sell in the next two years, and only 21% are planning to build new properties. When 90% of those planning to leave cite reforms to the private rented sector as a reason, we need an opportunity to reflect and to see the impact assessment.

Having set out some of my reasons for supporting new clause 20, I will turn briefly to new clause 15, which has been mentioned many times already. I appreciate why it has been tabled in the tragic circumstances that have been laid out. In the light of some conversations we had in Committee, I am interested to see who is in scope to be considered family for the purposes of that guarantor system. The new clause lists

“child…grandchild…parent…grandparent…sibling…niece or nephew…aunt or uncle…or, a cousin”.

That is a wide but—I think we would all agree—highly realistic view of what family is. However, in schedule 1 to the Bill, a landlord can only evict an existing tenant to house a parent, grandparent, sibling, child or grandchild.

I raised this matter with the Minister in Committee, and I know that he thinks tenants’ rights would be inhibited if we extended the definition of family, but I find it puzzling that a wide extended family is justified in new clause 15, but not in the determination of who lives in a property under schedule 1. Often, those family members may be vulnerable themselves and need somewhere to live. It is a niche point, but for the Government to say that someone cannot house their niece or nephew—or, in the light of new clause 15, their aunt, uncle or cousin—feels like an overreach of the state. We are slightly testing ownership rights and restricting trust and freedom in society as a result.