Renters’ Rights Bill

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Tuesday 14th January 2025 Commons Chamber

Let me clear: this Bill is pro-market, not anti-landlord. It will help create a more stable rental sector in which good landlords can thrive and bad landlords are held to account. This is good for tenants, it is good for responsible landlords and it is good for our economy.

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

I rise to speak on new clause 10 in my name and Government new clause 15, but before I do so, I would like to make some brief remarks about other aspects of the Bill. In my constituency of Dulwich and West Norwood, housing is overwhelmingly the biggest challenge that my constituents face. Housing costs have spiralled, and the previous Government wasted more than a decade failing to build the homes we need. The effect of this has been that more and more of my constituents are living in privately rented homes, in which they are currently systematically denied the basic stability and security that most of us would agree are essential to being able to function properly in the rest of life.

Private tenants live with the constant fear that their landlord can at any time, without reference to the terms of their tenancy agreement, decide that they want their property back and serve an eviction notice. I have seen this happen time and again. It stops people putting down roots in their community, because they know that they are likely not to be able to stay. It means that parents live with the constant anxiety that they may have to move far away from their children’s school. It means that older people are denied security of tenure in their retirement. In return for extortionate rents, tenants all too often face appalling standards, and find it far too difficult to get basic health and safety issues addressed.

I therefore welcome this Bill, which delivers the biggest package of reforms to private renting for 40 years, redressing the current imbalance between landlords and tenants, strengthening tenants’ rights and providing much-needed additional security. I particularly welcome the scrapping of section 21 evictions—I have been speaking on them in this place since 2016—the strengthening of local authority enforcement powers and the creation of a new private rented sector ombudsman, and the application of Awaab’s law to the private rented sector.

There is a very great challenge about the affordability of private renting, particularly in London, and my constituents experience that every day. I hope the Minister will keep under review the measures in this Bill that are designed to limit the rate of rent increases to ensure they are as effective as they need to be to create a functioning rental market. I trust that the Minister will do that, and will not hesitate to take further action in future if it is needed.

I now turn to my own new clause 10 and Government new clause 15, which would ban the use of guarantor agreements in the event of the death of a tenant. In this place, all of us know that there are sometimes emails that stop us in our tracks. So it was for me when, in 2023, I received an email from a constituent that read as follows:

“Late last year I became a guarantor for my son so that he could secure accommodation with some friends for his second year at university; without me doing so, he would have lost the house. I had no real concerns about my son paying the rent as he had shown he was a hard worker in a variety of jobs he engaged with to supplement his student loan, which would have covered the rent anyway. The tenancy was due to start at the beginning of July. Tragically, two weeks ago he took his own life, leaving myself, my wife and his sister utterly devastated. On top of everything, I now find myself liable to pay the rent for his room for the entire length of his tenancy if a replacement tenant cannot be found…I wonder if there might be scope to look into the practice of expecting bereaved parents to continue in a role of guarantor to a loved one after they have died.”

I do not think anyone could read that email and think that what happened to my constituents who were facing the worst kind of pain was remotely acceptable. I contacted the letting agent who refused to budge, simply stating that they were following the contract that had been signed.

[Florence Eshalomi]

I thank my hon. Friend and neighbour for making such a powerful speech and reading out what must have been a difficult email to receive on behalf of her constituent. Does she agree that, sadly, many other tenants up and down the country might have had to go through that, and suffered in silence because they were grieving?

[Helen Hayes]

I agree with my hon. Friend, and I will speak in a moment about evidence I have received that this issue is more widespread than any of us might have imagined. I raised the issue at Prime Minister’s questions, and after that I was contacted by many people, including families who had experienced exactly that, as well as letting agents who told me that they explicitly did not use such clauses, and that such clauses were not necessary because the loss of rental income in the event of the death of a tenant is an insurable risk for landlords.

I am grateful to Members across the House who have supported my campaign, including 48 Members who signed new clause 10, and those who signed my amendment to the Renters (Reform) Bill in the last Parliament. I engaged extensively with two different housing Ministers in the previous Government, both of whom said that they were sympathetic but declined to take action in that Bill or support my amendment. I am therefore grateful to the Minister for Housing and Planning for his compassionate and rigorous engagement on this issue. He has listened and, more importantly, he has acted where his predecessors did not. Government new clause 15, tabled this week, bans the use of guarantor agreements in the event of the death of a tenant who is a family member. That is what my constituent asked of me, and I am proud that that is what we will achieve today. I hope my constituents will take some small comfort from knowing that by speaking out and contacting their MP, other families faced with the heartbreak of losing a loved one will not be pursued by a greedy landlord or letting agent, adding financial stress and hardship to an already unbearable situation.

New clause 15 does not go as far as new clause 10, extending protection only to bereaved guarantors who are related to the tenant. While that protection would have helped my constituent, and while I agree that institutional guarantors should not automatically be released from their responsibilities on the death of a tenant, the limitations of the new clause mean that there could still be hard cases in future—for example, a close friend who is bereaved. I therefore trust that the Minister will keep the situation under review to ensure that new clause 15 is as effective as he intends. As a consequence of the Minister’s engagement on this matter, I am content to withdraw new clause 10 and support Government new clause 15. I urge all right hon. and hon. Members to do the same, and to support this Bill, which will deliver the step change in regulation of the private rented sector that we have all been needing for far too long.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), and I pay tribute to her for the work she has done in trying to alleviate the pain caused when someone dies and all the demands then descend unexpectedly on those who were rent guarantors. She has done a very good job on that and I welcome Government new clause 15.

My constituency, like other constituencies in London and most of our big cities, has a huge number of people living in the private rented sector, with probably more than one-third of the electorate living in private rented accommodation. Collectively, they face insecurity. Collectively, they are often stressed. Collectively, they are often paying high and excessive levels of rent. It is heartbreaking to see the number of people who make their home in the area, become active in the community and make a huge contribution to our community life in lots of ways, but then the rents go up and up, and they simply can no longer afford to stay. Anyone looking for private rented accommodation within the local housing allowance in most inner London constituencies would search for a long time and be unlikely to find anywhere remotely near that allowance. I see my friend the hon. Member for Bristol Central (Carla Denyer) nodding, and the same situation exists in many other cities across the country.

People on average earnings and working-class communities are simply being driven out by the greed of the private rented sector and the market that goes with it, with rents going up by 10%, 15% and sometimes 20%. That is why I intervened on the Minister earlier, and I am grateful that he gave way and acknowledged the real crisis happening day in, day out across the country. Long-term private sector tenants are at threat, because their landlords know this Bill is coming and that there will be greater restrictions—perhaps there should be more—on their raising of rents and doing no-fault evictions, so they are presently trying to evict large numbers of tenants. I meet many constituents who are going through incredible levels of stress about that. I realise that the Bill is not yet law and has to go through the House of Lords, and I am not clear what date it will be finally enacted; I just hope it is soon. I urge the Minister to consider any kind of urgent action and advice he can give to protect existing tenants in the run-up to the introduction of this legislation.

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Liverpool Wavertree (Paula Barker) for the amendment she has tabled on rent levels. While there is much in the Bill that I welcome, it is sadly a bit of a missed opportunity. Although it restricts the ability of landlords to raise rents in the future, it does not protect those rents being at a reasonable level. Her amendment, which is a good step forward, would link all rent increases to a combination of wage levels and CPI and give local authorities the power to enforce that. We surely should return to that. I hope that the Government will accept one or other of the many amendments that talk about the ability to review this legislation a year on and two years on to see its effects on rent levels and, above all, on security of tenure and whether ways have been found to get around it.

New clause 9, tabled by the hon. Member for Bristol Central, concerns the protection of tenants with disabilities to ensure that they are not discriminated against, and it is important. It has been widely supported across the House, and I hope the Government will agree it, or at least introduce something similar on Report in the Lords if necessary. The hon. Member is representing an important and genuine need across the country.

Lastly, we have a housing crisis in Britain that is utterly beyond belief and utterly unnecessary. I talk to people every day where I live who are rough sleepers. They are walking around, spending the whole day trying to sell The Big Issue to raise £10 or £20 to pay for a bed in a night shelter that they can only access in the evening and have to leave in the morning. It is not accommodation, it is literally just that: a night shelter. Their life is searching for £20 in order just to survive. I am not saying that the local authority does not do all it can to help—it does. I am not saying there are not lots of housing charities that do the same—there are.

But we have a well known number of people living in destitution in our society, grotesque overcrowding in many council and housing association homes, and insecurity in the private rented sector. The Bill goes a long way in reducing insecurity in the private rented sector, but it must be a wake-up call for our society to invest far more in council housing and in sustainable, affordable social housing.