Private Landlords and Letting and Managing Agents (Regulation) Bill

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Andy Sawford

Friday 25th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Andy Sawford]

Sadly, I feel there will still be rogue practitioners in the industry, but we will take a great step forward today in protecting people if we support these measures; we will increasingly marginalise those rogue landlords. We will make those practices ever more unacceptable and I hope we can go further towards ensuring there are prosecutions and enforcement against rogue landlords.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

Further to that point, in respect of criminal landlords, would it not be better to enforce the existing law, rather than thinking that passing a new law is the solution?

[Andy Sawford]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s urging of the Government to enforce the existing law properly. I would also urge him to take up with them the loss of 5,000 police officers and the huge loss of resources our Crown Prosecution Service is facing, which mean that many cases, even those taken up by the police, are not referred to it. I would also urge him to look at the consequences of the massive and unfair cuts to local authorities, particularly those with the highest number of people who are being treated unfairly by landlords in the private rented sector. Their cut has been disproportionately large, and that affects their ability to seek to intervene where landlords are behaving unfairly locally. Local authorities have some responsibility for trading standards, too, which are being decimated, as local authorities find they can only sustain statutory responsibilities. If the hon. Gentleman wants to support me, I will gladly work with him and perhaps we can form a cross-party campaign. I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield will lead us on that, and we can seek more resources for enforcement within the current framework. I would love the hon. Gentleman to support additional enforcement and regulation.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I look forward to this fabulous nirvana of red-blue alliance, but may I suggest that if the bleak picture the hon. Gentleman paints is accurate, giving more responsibilities to the people who are so appallingly funded, etcetera, etcetera, will make it even harder for them to carry out their duties? According to his own argument, he would want them to have less to do so that they could do it within the resources they already have.