Section 21 Evictions

Kevin Hollinrake Excerpts

Tuesday 25th October 2022 Westminster Hall

[Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the potential merits of ending section 21 evictions.

I am grateful to have secured time for a debate on this matter, which continues to affect all our constituents. I start by paying tribute to my constituents in Liverpool, Walton, who are the innocent victims of the country’s current broken housing system.

“Everyone renting in the private sector has the right to feel secure in their home, settled in their community and able to plan for the future with confidence. But millions of responsible tenants could still be uprooted by their landlord with little notice, and often little justification. This is wrong”—

those are not my words but the words of the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), who was the Prime Minister in 2019, when the Government first committed to scrapping no-fault evictions. In the three years since, more than 200,000 renters have been evicted—that is the equivalent of an eviction every seven minutes, and that is despite an eviction ban that was in place for 14 months during the pandemic.

Section 21 evictions allow for landlords in the private rented sector to evict tenants from their properties without having to establish any fault on the part of the tenant. When a notice is served, it gives tenants just two months to leave their homes. Even the threat of eviction has detrimental effects on tenants. Section 21 notices mean that tenants are unlikely to exercise other rights, such as the very limited right to challenge rent increases, for fear of retaliatory eviction.

Research by Shelter shows that nearly one in five renters have decided not to complain about poor conditions in their homes for fear of being evicted. I witness that frequently in my constituency. A constituent who visited my office had complained to her landlord about the lack of essential repairs to the front and back doors. The landlord refused to carry them out. After she complained again, she received a section 21 notice in the post, telling her to leave the property. That shows the clear imbalance in power when tenants are held hostage to a bad landlord in an inadequate property.

It is easy to underestimate the dislocating and exhausting experience of someone being evicted from the place they call home: living in limbo; never certain of when their time may be up; having to pack up belongings, leave support networks and potentially change employment —all at immense personal, mental and financial cost. Children being unmoored and having to move schools or leave friends and family behind can have a lifelong impact on learning and development.

My constituency office recently spoke to a constituent who contacted us after being served a section 21 eviction notice. She has been living in her property for 13 years with her two children, aged 12 and two. She suffers from anxiety, and after being told she must leave the property her anxiety has “gone through the roof”. She has never had panic attacks as bad as they are now. She said it is

“exhausting to look after kids at the same time as worrying about where we will end up.”

She told us that being served with the eviction notice was “cruel”, and that

“you should not be able to drop a note through someone’s door telling them to pick their lives up and move on.”

If constituents are removed from properties, they are often placed on long property waiting lists, compounding the sense of uncertainty and insecurity that they experience. I want to take this opportunity to commend local organisations such as Vauxhall and Merseyside law centres, ACORN and my local Liverpool Shelter branch, which carry out fantastic work in almost impossible circumstances to support my constituents in the face of minimal Government support. All MPs here will have similar stories from their own constituents, and may be planning to share their contributions today. Indeed, it was those stories, and the tireless work of the renters’ unions and housing campaigners, that pushed the then Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead, to promise a new deal for renters in 2019.

It will come as little consolation that the Labour party announced in December 2017 that any future manifesto would contain a commitment to remove no-fault evictions. The 2019 Conservative manifesto echoed that commitment, promising the abolition of no-fault evictions so that tenants were

“protected from revenge evictions and rogue landlords”.

Again, those are the Conservatives’ words, not mine. Of course, like many Tory promises, that was not worth the paper it was written on. The two and a half years of the premiership of the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) passed without any Bill being published.

We have had a consultation, which the Government responded to by again vowing to abolish section 21, but now we find it kicked into the legislative long grass. It was not a priority for the previous Administration and no one knows what the new Government are minded to do—I hope the Minister can shed some light on that today. This is all despite the huge public support for the reform of private renting: some 79% of the public, 80% of Conservative voters and 86% of voters over the age of 65 back greater protections for private renters, according to Generation Rent data.

The private rented sector is dominated and characterised by insecure tenure, increasingly unaffordable rents, poor housing quality and the ever-present risk of eviction. Data from Crisis showed that in the last financial year nearly 20,000 households faced homelessness after receiving a no-fault eviction notice. Losing a private tenancy is the second biggest cause of homelessness in England. If the Government are serious about ending homelessness, what are their reasons for delay? No one should be going homeless.

When we know that private sector tenants have to move more often than people in any other tenure, and then face average moving costs of well over £1,500, we should be doing all we can to ensure that constituents are not pushed into destitution following receipt of a section 21 notice. That is more important than ever in the midst of the current Tory-engineered economic chaos that is causing absolute misery to many people throughout the country.

We are all aware of the huge challenges that our constituents face: the skyrocketing cost of living, food prices at a 40-year high, record energy costs and skyscraping inflation. All those conditions make the need for a safe and secure home more important than ever before. Add to that the dwindling supplies of affordable housing, and more than three decades of deregulation, and it is easy to realise how we have created the toxic conditions that we now find ourselves in.

Where is the Government’s plan to deal with this? It may prove to be too late for many people throughout the country. To use just one example, statistics from the Ministry of Justice show that the situation is not getting better for renters but much, much worse: there was a 52% increase in the number of no-fault evictions between April and June 2022.

Conditions for private renters are continuing to deteriorate, and the Government’s neglect is the cause. That increase in forced evictions took place against the background of 11% inflation, and rent increases of 11.8% outside of London, according to Rightmove. Those rent increases are widespread—data from Shelter shows that 1 million private renters were hit with a rent increase in August 2022 alone—and have a clear knock-on effect: eviction claims for rent arrears are at their highest level since records began.

No one from the Conservative party seems to recognise that rent increases also cause inflation. They are frequently eager to call for pay restraint, or for benefits to be held down, but never for landlords to heed the same advice. The Government continue to consult on a rent cap in the social housing sector. Why is it that private sector tenants are always forgotten about? Announcing the consultation, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said:

“Putting a cap on rent increases for social tenants offers security and stability to families across England.”

Highlighting the potential increases of 11% next year for social tenants, the press release stated that this move would

“prevent rents…from rising significantly.”

When we know that price rises will be the same or potentially higher in the private rented sector, why will the Government not provide the same protection to private renters?

In Scotland, emergency legislation has been announced to freeze rents and establish a six-month moratorium on evictions, for both the private rented and social sectors. That demonstrates that, where the political will exists, action can be taken quickly and decisively to provide relief for tenants. What analysis of that legislation have the UK Government carried out? Would the Government be minded to announce a similar pause on evictions?

A dramatic increase in the availability of buy-to-let mortgages, little growth and access to the social rented sector, and now skyrocketing interest rates caused by a mix of backwards ideology and financial illiteracy, have led to a growth in the number of households renting privately. The lack of housing affordability and tenant security in the private rented sector go hand in hand. The cost of frequent, unwanted moves makes people worse off, and money spent on rent is money that is not spent on putting down a deposit or saving for a mortgage.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

The hon. Member cites the experience in Scotland, where they have had to introduce rent controls on the back of abolishing section 21; is he advocating that we should adopt rent controls for the private rented sector?

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[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure, Ms Nokes, to speak with you in the Chair. I realise that when you are in a minority of one, although you are not necessarily wrong, it probably increases the chances of your being wrong, so I will probably swim against the tide of some of the speeches in this debate.

Before I go any further, I should say that there is no doubt that there is a problem in the private rented sector. Everybody would like to see a solution so that people who want to live in accommodation for the longer term are able to. However, let me take Members back to 1985, if I can. I was a relatively young estate agent in York. If someone wanted to rent a property back then, they had a very limited choice—it was probably between three or four quite dark and shabby two-bedroom terraced houses off Bishopthorpe Road in York. There was so little choice back then because we did not have section 21, so if someone invested in the private rented sector and rented a property out—if they were a landlord—and somebody occupied their property, in effect they did so permanently, if they wanted. Members might think that is a really good idea and the solution to our problems; I fear it would lead to many unintended consequences, as it did back then.

Back then we had rent controls. The hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden) may say that having rent controls is a really good thing, but it would end up putting layer upon layer of legislation on top of what the Government are currently thinking of doing in terms of the abolition of section 21. That will lead to more and more regulation, which will lead to less and less supply. Ultimately, that is very counter—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman shakes his head, but that was the reality of the mid-1980s.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I know we are not here to talk primarily about rent controls, but they go back to at least 1915. On section 21, the hon. Gentleman may be flogging a dead horse. I do not know whether he has seen the briefing from the National Residential Landlords Association, but it says that 70% of landlords could envisage operating without section 21 and another 8% say that it had never been important to them in the first place. The hon. Gentleman may be defending the landlords’ cause, but they may have accommodated the Government’s position and our position already.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Like the hon. Gentleman, I have seen that briefing. That means that in effect somewhere between 20% and 30% of supply might go overnight, or go very quickly, and we have seen that in Scotland—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman can shake his head, but it is a reality. We have seen in Scotland a reduction in supply on the back of the abolition of section 21, followed by rent controls.

Back in York in the mid-1980s, what the Government are saying will happen is—

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

On a point of order, Ms Nokes. I do not mean this with any malice, but I think that the hon. Gentleman should refer to his entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I appreciate that. The hon. Lady could have made an intervention and I would have responded, but she is absolutely right, and I draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. For many years, I owned an estate agency lettings business, which I do not own any more. I have, I think, four private rented properties in the private rented sector, but I absolutely do not speak on my own behalf; if anything, I speak on behalf of tenants, because I think that the measures being advocated would lead to a reduction in supply, which would ultimately be massively counterproductive for tenants. That is the conversation we should be having: one about whether or not this idea is good for tenants.

If the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton will just indulge me for a second in terms of responding to his points—he is shaking his head, but if he just listened to my points, it might be useful. Rent controls applied back then. It was not as if rent controls were set according to market value, because there is no market value at that point. As soon as we introduce rent controls, we effectively get rid of market values. That is what happens. Back then the rent offices would compare a property only with other properties that had been rented out, none of which were accessible by the open market. Rent controls take us away from a free market completely.

The Government are also saying that if a landlord needs to reoccupy a property or wants to sell it, they will allow them to do that and ask the tenant to leave on that basis, but that loophole was closed then and it will be closed again. Back then, if someone wanted to ask a tenant to leave, they had to find another house for them. They had to be provided with another house, because the Government did not want that to be used as a back door to getting that tenant out.

[Dan Carden]

To bring the debate back to the merits of ending section 21 evictions, does the hon. Member think that his Government should deliver on their promises, or should they backtrack on them?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

My speech is very much in the context of section 21, in that the end of section 21 will not be the end of such measures. I do not think we should abolish section 21, certainly not without more measures relating to how we deal with section 8, which is the other mechanism for getting to grips with difficult tenants—difficult not just for the landlord, but for communities. Some 50% of section 21 notices are used to get people who are guilty of criminal or antisocial behaviour out. Let us not forget the impact of what the hon. Gentleman proposes on local communities.

[Dan Carden]

It’s your Government.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I have spoken to every single Government Minister about my opposition to their plans. Section 8 uses a court-based process. It takes around eight months to get somebody out of a property using section 8. If a person is guilty of antisocial behaviour or is well behind on the rent—measures cannot be taken until somebody is about two months behind—it will take months. It is not that much of a problem for Legal and General, Grainger, Fizzy Living or whatever. They have thousands of properties. If they have a few dodgy tenants, they can blend that problem across their whole estate, so everybody pays for the tenants who make trouble, do not pay their rent or behave in an antisocial manner. What about the small landlord?

I like it when the Opposition talk about business. They always talk about small and medium-sized businesses, as do I. They say that we should abolish section 21, but if someone with one or two properties has a tenant who does not pay their rent for eight months, for whatever reason, that can be devastating to their investment, so lots of SMEs will exit the marketplace, particularly if we abolish section 21 without first reforming court- based process.

When the section 21 measures were introduced in the Housing Act 1988, we saw a massive increase in supply, which has been very good for tenants. The reality is that in most parts of the country, most yields on properties—the return on capital investment—are pretty low. We are looking at a rental yield of 2% to 4%. Interest rates will be 5%, 6% or higher, so if landlords borrow money to buy a property, most will not get an annual return. Most landlords are not profiteering from the private rented sector—far from it.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that it is appropriate for people who live in rented accommodation to be subject to the vagaries of the market? We are talking about people who live their lives in these homes. What exactly does he envisage they will do in this scenario?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

That is an interesting point. The vast majority of people in the private rented sector are happy with the shorter-term nature of rented accommodation. I wish the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton, would not shake his head and would listen to what I say. There is a cohort of people who want to live in rented accommodation permanently. They want it as their family home. I absolutely agree that the Government should provide accommodation for those people. The Government should invest in this much more, and provide long-term, affordable rented accommodation and social rented accommodation. That is definitely the Government’s job where there is market failure.

I concede that there are market failures for people who want to live in permanent rented accommodation. I am not against the Government stepping in and ensuring that can happen. However, if they step in, tell the private rented sector to ensure that, and set out the rules that apply to someone who wants to make an investment in the sector, the reality is that we will get a reduction in investment in the private rented sector, which will mean a reduction in supply, which will make it more difficult for the tenants on whose behalf Members are speaking. That is the reality of the situation. So, yes: we should make greater public investment in long-term rental accommodation to deal with this issue. However, we should not tell landlords, who invest their private money in the private rented sector, that they have to let their property for life, which is what the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton is considering.

If the hon. Gentleman wants the private rented sector to do that, a way of dealing with the issue would be to offer incentives for that. We could look at capital gains tax, for example; perhaps people who are willing to rent their property for a much longer period—for five or 10 years, or maybe even for life—could get beneficial capital gains tax treatment. Alternatively, we could reverse some of the changes we made in the Finance (No. 2) Act 2015, in which we restricted mortgage interest in the private rented sector; that was pretty damaging for lots of landlords in the sector. We could say to landlords, “We are no longer limiting the way you can deduct interest against your annual rental income, as long as you’re willing to rent your property out for longer, or for life, to give security of tenure to those kinds of tenants.”

I will conclude very shortly, Ms Nokes. The other unintended consequence of what the hon. Gentleman proposes is that private rented sector landlords will prioritise the best tenants. They will not take a risk because of concerns about non-payment of rent. You are going to disadvantage the people you seek to protect through the measures that the Government are planning and that the Opposition—

[Caroline Nokes (in the Chair)]

Order. Not “you”—that would be me.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I am ever so sorry. That is the first time I have done that in seven years in this place. What is being proposed will disadvantage the people the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton, seeks to protect.

I am fully convinced the Government will push ahead with the proposals, and that the Opposition will double down on this if they ever get into Government. I am just saying that they should be careful what they wish for, because this would be very damaging for the people they seek to protect.

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[Rachael Maskell]

I will continue my speech for the moment, if I may. My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton highlighted the sudden 52% increase in the number of evictions this year. There is a reason for that, and the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) referred to it: section 24 of the Finance (No. 2) Act 2015.

We have to look at cause and effect in relation to evictions. In came legislation to curb the advantages of the buy-to-let market, meaning that landlords did not get the tax advantages they had previously had. As a result, they are in negative equity, and are therefore looking at how they can derive a profit. I see that happening in two ways in my constituency: first, landlords putting up rents significantly so that they can break even on their investment; and, secondly, landlords evicting tenants, either to put up rents—that is rare—or to flip the house over to become an Airbnb.

In my constituency, we have seen a sharp increase in the short-term holiday let market. The statistics for whole properties show that back in January 2018 there were 973. Now there are 2,118. That decreases the supply of available housing even more, so if more demand is placed on the market, up go the rents again. People in York are pulling their children out of school, giving notice on their jobs and moving out of the area. That has skewed the local economy. We cannot recruit to our public services, and we are in rapid decline, because those 2,000 homes were built to be residential. With a council that is not building, the market is rapidly becoming overheated; it is broken. When someone can make £700 over a weekend on a property—a party house, as we see in the Airbnb market in York—or £945 on rent every month, why would they hang around and not flip their property? That is how the section 21 notices are being used in the residential areas of York. It is breaking communities and harming the market. It also shows how broken the whole market is.

On top of that, the local housing allowance does not meet the levels required, for people who would much prefer to be in social housing. We have to look at the broad rental market area, which is far too large. When there is a heated-up housing market, people who cannot get into social housing also cannot get into private housing, and they have nowhere to go.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The hon. Lady is making a good point about holiday homes. Does she concede that section 24, which limits mortgage interest for people who provide homes to the private rented sector but does not apply to holiday homes, is one incentive to make a property a holiday home? If section 21 were abolished, there would be at least two reasons to provide a holiday home, rather than a property to the private rented sector.

[Rachael Maskell]

The hon. Member makes a point, but it is not an either/or scenario. I appreciate that it is a mess, but the Government have to mop up that mess, as it is of their own making. The fact we have seen landlords rapidly flip their properties demonstrates the urgency of addressing the issue.

I hope hon. Members will support my private Member’s Bill—the Short-term and Holiday-let Accommodation (Licensing) Bill—which is due to have its Second Reading on 9 December. I am looking to license the short-term holiday let market to provide security and allow local authorities the control to prevent some of that flipping. We have to get to the source of the problems. I trust the Minister will address that today.

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[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Ms Nokes, and to take part in a debate instigated by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden).

I will start by trying to agree with the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) on this point at least: it is a complex matter to get rid of section 21. Just doing so is not going to be an answer to all our problems in the private rented sector or the housing market as a whole. He took us back to 1985—somewhere I am always happier, politics apart. The housing market was very different in those days. We had just had the Housing Act 1985, which introduced secure tenancy for local authority tenants. A few years later, the Housing Act 1988 introduced assured tenancies, which are still the default tenancy, and are the main—should be the exclusive—tenancy for other social landlords, such as housing associations. We also had protected and controlled tenancies. Other Members with constituencies such as mine, with large private rented sectors, will still come across some protected tenancies, which predate that Act. Generally speaking, those tenants have had, by definition, decades-long good relationships with landlords, fuelled by the fact that they not only have security but a degree of rent control—a fair rent, though not entirely.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

That is an interesting point, but the hon. Gentleman will concede that when trying to sell a property with a protected tenancy, the value is usually about 30% below market value. If he is suggesting that that would be the effect of abolishing section 21, that would have a very detrimental effect on property values throughout the country.

[Andy Slaughter]

I will develop my argument and hope to take in that point.

I was giving the background to saying that the one thing that dramatically changed—one of the most fundamental changes in housing law, in the Housing Act 1988—was the ability to opt out of an assured tenancy and create an assured shorthold tenancy. Some social landlords do that; I deprecate it, but they do. Certainly, most private landlords would do that. That was a real change: introducing the free market, changing the relationship between landlord and tenant, and treating people’s homes as commodities for the first time. It is not that most landlords are not well intentioned or do not look after their tenants or, indeed, that they are not entitled to make a return on their investments, but I fundamentally believe there is a slightly different relationship because we are dealing with someone’s home.

The dramatic effect of that is disguised by the fact that—even in 1989, after council house sales had been going for most of a decade but had not really taken off—we still had a thriving social housing market in the 1980s. It was the first port of call for people who wanted a secure home in the rented sector. That disguised the full effect of assured shorthold tenancy and section 21. The briefing we have from Crisis for this debate tells us that 1.3 million families with children now live in the private rented sector of nearly 4.5 million households. I am sure that most of them would prefer the security and affordability of living in the social housing sector, but that is simply not open to them.

The dramatic decline in social housing really began with austerity in 2010, with the almost complete eradication of the social housing grant, after which more and more pressures and misery were piled on social landlords. Post Grenfell, we now have essential work on fire safety, but it is costing individual landlords tens of millions of pounds and they are getting very little of that back from the building safety fund. There is also retrofitting to comply with environmental standards. There are all those issues, along with the lack of resources among housing associations.

I have a major housing association in my constituency that has no build programme until at least 2030. It is selling off hundreds of its properties as they become void, just to make ends meet. The social housing that was the first port of call for people who wanted secure, affordable rented accommodation is no longer there for many people. As for the other source, which was through planning gain, I am afraid we are still—despite the best efforts of the Mayor of London and others, along with individual councils—subject to viability assessments. Therefore, we are not in any way delivering the degree of social housing that we need to.

Such is the context in which we see the private rented sector. It will take time and a Labour Government, I am afraid, to turn that round. I wish the last Labour Government had done more on building social housing and possibly on reforming the private rented sector. Yet as I say, the problems were not as apparent then; they are now. It will take years to build the properties we need. To make the substantive changes in the law, we probably need another major piece of housing legislation. In the time it takes to turn that round, the private rented sector has to be reformed; that is a quicker option. That includes getting rid of no-fault evictions to give people that basic security, but that will not be sufficient in itself. It has to be done in the round.

We have to look at rent levels; if landlords can put rents up as high as they want to, that will just be another way of evicting people without due cause. We have to look at disrepair, which is worse than I have seen it for 20 or 30 years. We have to look at what the exemptions and exceptions are that would allow a landlord to evict. Clearly, there have to be some, but if there are too many and they are too vague, we will simply be replacing one type of no-fault eviction with another.

I do not say all that to get the Government to say, “We will take this away and bring it back in a couple of years’ time.” We would like the Minister to keep the promise that has been made. I know it was a couple of Prime Ministers ago—I think it was last week—but I think we heard from the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) that this was still part of the legislative agenda. I hope it still is and I hope they get on with it and do it. What they must not do is think that that is the end of the matter. We will have to wait for a Labour Government to have wholesale housing reform, but if the Minister is going to surprise me on that, I will be very grateful.

This is my last point. I mentioned earlier that the National Residential Landlords Association had given a very thoughtful briefing for this debate. As a body, it is helpful in engaging with people, including with tenants’ organisations and trying to represent decent landlords in that way—all their members probably are decent landlords, because indecent landlords would probably not be members of the NRLA. It specifically mentioned improving tenants’ access to legal support. That is absolutely vital, whereas other things that the Government are doing are not.

If tenants want to challenge matters—even section 21 notices can be challenged if they have not been properly served or executed, or if there are other matters, or if there has been harassment—legal advice is very important. Next April, the Government will impose fixed recoverable costs, which means that not-for-profit organisations such as law centres and those few solicitors who still operate under legal aid will not be able to subsidise their housing work by recovering costs inter partes in that way. I have nothing against fixed recoverable costs in principle, but in practice they will mean a further collapse in the housing legal sector, which in turn will mean that it will be increasingly difficult for people to challenge matters.

The other issues that the NRLA raised are local housing allowance and universal credit, including the delay in paying universal credit, and the gap between what housing allowance gives and the actual cost of properties. Those are all legitimate points. If the Government think they will get a big tick from the private rented sector—any part of it—simply by dealing with the section 21 issue, I need to disabuse the Minister of that notion. Nevertheless, we would like to hear a little more confirmation about what the Government are going to do to about the situation—most of these people, whether they would prefer to be in social housing or to be owner-occupiers, increasingly do not want to be in the private rented sector.

If we had a decent and thriving private rented sector, then some people would make it their first choice, but many people are in the sector because they have no other option. They have run out of options in terms of their living conditions, their overcrowding, their security and the amount of rent they have to pay. The sector needs a proper look. Since the Housing Act 1988, we have declined into a society in which people’s right to a decent home—that is a human right, although if we are going to have another change of Lord Chancellor, perhaps it will not remain one for very long—has declined. The Government need to look at this sector in the round. They cannot just say, “We will do one or two piecemeal things”. They cannot tinker with the housing market; it needs full, wholesale reform.

[Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure, Ms Nokes, to serve with you in the Chair.

This has been an important and timely debate because, as we have heard in the many excellent contributions this afternoon, the problems inherent in a sector that for far too many renters has always been characterised by insecurity, high rents and poor conditions, have become far more acute over recent months, as those renting privately struggle to cope with the impact of high inflation and rising prices.

I start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden) on securing the debate and on the characteristically powerful way in which he opened it. He always speaks with strength and clarity on behalf of his constituents and he did so again today, making a powerful case that overhauling the private rented sector in Liverpool and across the country is a matter of the utmost urgency.

I also thank my hon. Friends the Members for West Ham (Ms Brown), for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood), for York Central (Rachael Maskell) and for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter), as well as the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), for their excellent contributions. Although there are common problems and solutions, I am always mindful of the fact that there are different “geographies” of renting and challenges that are specific to certain parts of the country. The debate usefully highlighted that point.

Doubtless it was not the choice of my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton, but when I read the title of this debate late last week it struck me as somewhat odd, given its implicit suggestion that the merits of ending section 21 evictions are still essentially being contested. While there are, of course, those who remain resolutely opposed to reform of any kind, the reality is that there is now a broad political consensus on the need to ban these so-called no-fault evictions. It is obvious why such a consensus exists. As things stand, and as we have heard again today, landlords can evict tenants, after giving as little as two months’ notice, at any point after their fixed-term tenancy has come to an end. They do not have to give a reason for doing so, or even have one.

As a result, large numbers of private renters live day to day in the knowledge that they could be uprooted with little notice and minimal justification, if any. With the threat of summary evictions hanging over them, a significant proportion of those people concentrated at the lower end of the private rental market, who have little or no purchasing power, have to put up with appalling conditions for fear that a complaint will lead to an instant retaliatory eviction. Far too many tenants are evicted each year using a section 21 notice, which is why it is a leading cause of homelessness in England. Abolishing section 21 no-fault evictions is therefore long overdue and will give private renters much-needed security in their homes.

The available evidence also suggests that scrapping section 21 is likely to provide private renters with greater certainty and control over their lives without any corresponding detrimental consequences—unintended or otherwise—or disruption. I draw the attention of the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) to research carried out by Shelter into the impact of the effective abolition of no-fault evictions in Scotland, following the introduction of new private residential tenancy agreements there in 2017. It found that the measure had no discernible impact on either the size or functioning of the private rented sector there, or on increased levels of homelessness.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I add my thanks to the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden) for bringing forward the debate. He raised some good points at the start of his speech, which we should consider.

The hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook) might be interested to know that, in the past year, UK rents have risen fastest in Scotland. If he was including me among the people who do not want any reform, then he should not: I absolutely do want to see reform. I would like to see property rental standards that landlords must adhere to, and reforms of the section 21 process, but just not the abolition we are talking about today.

[Matthew Pennycook]

I deliberately did not assign to the hon. Gentleman a blanket position of “no reform”, but I think that, on this point, he is fundamentally wrong. We need reform, on section 21 and more widely; I will come on to that point.

That research for Shelter is telling because the predictions made by landlord groups in Scotland prior to the introduction of PRT agreements, including that they would kill the sector entirely, have ultimately not come to pass. We should have that at the forefront of our minds when vested interests in the English sector warn of the dire consequences of renters reform.

We in the Opposition still appreciate that good landlords may still harbour concerns about how reform will impact them. We recognise that when section 21 evictions are finally abolished, landlords will need recourse to robust and effective grounds for possession in circumstances where there are good reasons for taking a property back—for example, anti-social or criminal behaviour. We also share the sector’s concern about how ongoing delays in court proceedings could impact on a landlord’s ability to make use of such grounds. However, it is a welcome sign that most landlords and landlord associations now appreciate that greater security and better rights and conditions for tenants are the future of the lettings sector.

When it comes to reforming the private rented sector, scrapping section 21 evictions is obviously not the end of the matter. Among a wide range of necessary measures, we need action on standards to address the shameful fact that one in five private rented homes does not meet the decent homes standard, and one in 10 has a category 1 hazard posing a risk of serious harm. We need changes to landlord-to-tenant notice periods and a national register of landlords. We must make it illegal for landlords and agents to refuse to let to renters claiming benefits, and we need effective measures to address unreasonable within-tenancy rises.

Those go alongside other reforms that are desperately needed. As my hon. Friend the Member for York Central will know, we have argued for many months in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill Committee that the Government must act with far more urgency on the growing short-term and holiday lets sector. That is why Labour has made clear that, in Government, we will introduce a new renters’ charter, a new statutory decent homes standard, and take action on short-term and holiday lets.

Thankfully, there is significant consensus across the Chamber on the need to reform the sector more fundamentally, and a number of the measures that I have just outlined were in the White Paper published by the Government earlier this year. The problem is that, as things stand, not only do we not have any firm parliamentary timeline for a renters reform Bill, but, given the disarray within Government, we do not even have the certainty that one will ultimately come forward in this Parliament or, if it eventually does, that it will contain all the proposals set out in the White Paper. As such, I would like to use the opportunity presented by this debate to ask the Minister two simple questions to which private renters following our proceedings will expect answers.

First—as many hon. Members have asked today, and as I have asked many times without receiving a satisfactory answer—when do the Government plan to finally introduce a renters reform Bill? It was in the Conservative party manifesto, so presumably the Government intend to have it secure Royal Assent before the end of this Parliament. However, the Minister must appreciate that private renters facing a difficult winter cannot wait until 2024 for the Government to act. If they introduced emergency legislation, we would support it, but private renters deserve at least some assurance today that the Government will make that a priority.

Secondly, can the Minister confirm that if and when it is finally published, the promised renters reform Bill will contain all 12 of the proposed reforms set out in the White Paper? The last piece of legislation that fundamentally altered the relationship between landlord and tenant in England was the Housing Act 1988, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith rightly made clear in incredible detail, the private rented sector has changed beyond recognition in the more than three decades since that legislation was put on the statute book. It is simply no longer possible to regard its role as primarily a residual tenure for those temporarily unable to access owner occupation or social housing.

Some 11 million people now rent from a private landlord. As well as the young and mobile, the sector now houses many older people and families with young children, for whom greater security and certainty is essential to a flourishing life. At the end of the day, that is what we need to be thinking about here—not the price of housing or the commodification elements involved in the sector. To ensure that private renters get a fair deal, we in this place need to transform how the private rented sector is regulated and level the playing field between landlords and tenants.

As hon. members have said, it is now well over three years since the Conservative Administration of the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) promised to abolish section 21 no-fault evictions. In that time, over 45,000 households have been threatened with homelessness as a result of section 21 evictions, and the figures released so far this year suggest that possession claims resulting from them are increasing markedly as the cost of living crisis intensifies. It is high time that the Government stopped talking a good game about renters reform and got on with legislating for it, and the Minister needs to make it clear this afternoon that they will do so.