Universal Credit: Private Rented Sector

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 9th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I thank the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd) and congratulate him on securing this debate. I was happy to co-sign his request to the Backbench Business Committee, and I am aware of the issues.

I will make some generic comments at the beginning, and then I will refer to Northern Ireland, as other Members have, and what we are doing there. We in Northern Ireland face the issue of how people can pay regularly for their rent in private accommodation. Every day, every week and every month, it is an issue in my office. Where there is a dearth of Housing Executive properties and housing association properties, people must go to private rented landlords for accommodation. There are approximately 4,000 people on the housing list in my constituency. They are in different categories, but around 1,000 of them are priority, which gives an idea of the housing need. The population is growing continuously, so we need to build above and beyond need to catch up. That is some of the background to the problems. As a result, there are not enough houses for the people who apply for housing, so they look elsewhere.

Rents in housing sector properties in Northern Ireland are between approximately £375 and £400—housing association rents are a bit higher again. In private accommodation outside the Housing Executive, people can pay anywhere between £500 and £600. Who pays that difference? The tenant. In some cases, the tenant is unable to pay and can apply for a discretionary payment that helps to meet some of the deficit. That lasts for a year and then they have to apply again. If they are successful, they have another year of a discretionary payment that enables them to pay their rent. I understand that such comments may be helpful to the debate.

A large proportion of people who live in the private rented sector are single parents under financial stress. We must be ever mindful of those people and how we address this issue. For them, finding the balance from minimal financial resources is an increasingly large problem. That is why this debate is so important. I spoke to the Minister beforehand and I am sure that she will be responsive to the concerns that we have all expressed. I want to be helpful to her in referring to some of the things that we are doing in Northern Ireland.

Landlords are faced with real problems. How do they continue to serve people who want private accommodation and work within the Government’s system at the same time? The Government have set moneys aside to increase targeted affordability funding by £40 million in 2018-19 and £85 million in 2019-20. Does that address the issue? From what hon. Members from the mainland have said in this debate, I would gently suggest that it does not. We look to the Minister to see how we can address the problem on the mainland.

The National Landlords Association has furnished me with some correspondence. The result of those problems is that landlords sell their property, and we have more people in poverty and more people seeking accommodation. We have heard about larger numbers of families living together in cramped accommodation. Debt continues to be the problem. In Northern Ireland, we have carried out legislative change. I suggest that the Minister looks at that as a marker of how we could do it better.

The fact is that 4.8 million people or 1.9 million privately renting households are entitled to less housing benefit than before the 2011 reforms. The average decrease is £19 per household per week. The figures show that people in the low-income bracket are suffering most. We need to do something in relation to that.

The National Landlords Association quarterly landlord panel states:

“Just two in 10 landlords…are willing to let to tenants in receipt of housing benefit or universal credit”.

That leaves eight landlords who are not prepared to. It is now less than 20%, which is down from 34% in 2013. I am sure the Minister has the background information that came from the Residential Landlords Association, which makes 16 recommendations. I suggest that those recommendations indicate a way and a methodology to address the issues.

My hon. Friend the Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell) made a succinct and important intervention. His comment was very salient—I leaned across and said, “Well, that’s my speech nearly over now”. He is a very modest person, but he was on our party’s committee in Northern Ireland that brought forward legislation in Northern Ireland to make a difference. He can take some credit for the changes there, as can our party. It is only fair that we put that on the record and give him the credit that he deserves.

We have legislation in Northern Ireland that clearly encapsulates what we are trying to achieve for everyone in the United Kingdom. Respectfully, if the Minister wanted to put in place something that would be suitable for the whole of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, she could do no better than replicate the legislation and the terminology that we have in Northern Ireland. That will address many of the issues that the hon. Member for Eastbourne raised and that other hon. Members and I have tried to address in our small contributions.