Renters (Reform) Bill

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 23rd October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

Absolutely. The sooner the Bill is on the statute book, the sooner we can proceed. Alongside that, we of course need to ensure that the justice system, as my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) made clear, is in a position to implement it effectively. That is why the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer), is present. He and I, and the Minister for Housing and Planning, are working to do just that.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

On the enhanced grounds for antisocial behaviour, I have one constituent who has been evicted because their baby was crying too much, and another who has been evicted because her husband was beating her too loudly. Does the Secretary of State not recognise that the grounds need to be discretionary ones on which the courts can deliberate, not mandatory ones? Otherwise, it will be a handle for abusers to use.

[Michael Gove]

I very much take the hon. Gentleman’s point. I do not believe that either of those two cases would count as antisocial behaviour under our proposals, but we need to ensure that we are clear about what constitutes antisocial behaviour liable to lead to eviction and what is, as in those cases, either a preposterous claim or an example of domestic abuse that the police should be investigating.

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[Angela Rayner]

I absolutely agree. I also think that, as the Secretary of State mentioned, most private landlords want to do the right thing and are a good part of our housing mix. They should therefore welcome the fact that we are doing our best to ensure that their good name is upheld and that they are not stained by the tiny minority who do not do the right thing, who are the reason why these protections are so overdue.

We are also concerned that the changes to antisocial behaviour grounds are, as they stand, ambiguous and open to abuse. Mental health needs and domestic abuse are sometimes reported as antisocial behaviour, so that definition must be made more pragmatic and focused on genuine antisocial behaviour. The Secretary of State made reference to this issue, and I heard what he said; I look forward to working with him in Committee to address it, because it is important.

The Bill is also silent on the issue of economic evictions. While it strengthens the law to ensure landlords can only increase rents once a year, which is welcome, the mechanism for tenants to contest excessive rent hikes is not strong enough, giving people little real protection against so-called economic evictions.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Is there not a particular problem with the evidence that the rent tribunals will look at? The proposal is that they will look at the average market rents, but the local housing allowance is set at only 30% of the local average, meaning that rents could increase above the LHA and no one would be able to complain about it.

[Angela Rayner]

It is absolutely right that we get into these challenges, because I do not think people feel that the current situation provides redress for the challenges they face. I hope that in Committee, the Secretary of State will listen to points made by Members across the House to ensure that people get the redress and support that they need, and that we strengthen tenants’ rights in this area.

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[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

Let me first refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and declare that I am the co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for renters and rental reform and am supported by Generation Rent.

It is almost hard to believe that the words “ban on no-fault evictions” will not be in the next Tory party manifesto. Those words have been in Queen’s Speeches. The Tories have promised, but they have not delivered. Now we know, of course, that that is because there was an almighty fight on the Conservative Benches—a fight that is still going on by the sounds of it. To all the dodgy landlords and vested interests watching this debate, I say that if they delay the Bill and its implementation further—as has been rumoured today—the result will be rental reform at the very core of the next general election campaign, and when Labour is in government, legislation might well go even further beyond what some of those vested interests want.

Enough about the politics; let us get down to the Bill itself. Central to this legislation is the abolition of section 21 no-fault evictions, which have been the blight of renters for many years. The aim is to provide safe homes that allow renters to establish roots in the community and start families—that is lacking at the moment. I am concerned, however, that the vastly expanded grounds for eviction might undermine the very concept of the Bill. Under schedule 1, grounds 1 and 1A remain no-fault clauses. They are for the landlord moving themselves in or selling. To prevent potential abuse of those grounds, it is crucial that landlords provide unequivocal evidence of their intentions, including through solicitors, agents’ letters or sworn statements to the court. After using those grounds, landlords should submit another statement within 16 weeks of possession, for example. Landlords who genuinely need to possess under those grounds have nothing to lose in making such legal declarations, and the clauses are useless without them.

There may be legitimate circumstances in which a ground is no longer relevant—someone might have been evicted but the landlord no longer wants to sell the property or have a family member move in, for example. Should that happen, reasonable compensation should be offered to the person who has been evicted. It is not fair to use the grounds and then say, “Whoopsie-daisy, I didn’t realise that I couldn’t sell.” There must be redress for the tenant who has been harmed.

Ground 6 allows for an eviction when the landlord is found to be at fault. Although I do not think that people who are unfit to be landlords should remain landlords, this ground penalises the tenants by discouraging them from co-operating with enforcement action. As such, we need either compensation for any no-fault eviction, or an administrative mechanism that keeps the tenant in the property but removes the landlord’s day-to-day control for as long as that tenant wishes to remain.

Grounds 8 and 8A deal with tenants who are in arrears. While there are some protections for universal credit payments, there are no protections where the arrears are irregular under ground 8A. Arrears might be repeated but very short, and the Domestic Abuse Housing Alliance has highlighted the risk that this poses to victims of domestic abuse. The courts need to have discretion; these clauses cannot be mandatory.

Lastly, ground 14 is one I have raised with the Minister. We need to ensure that antisocial behaviour is not an excuse for a section 21 eviction by the back door. Equally, the idea of a student eviction clause is very worrying; the National Union of Students does not support it, and I do not see how it could be practically enforced. I would want to see that idea fleshed out in Committee, or a pledge that it will be ditched.

I welcome the Government’s inclusion of two methods of enforcement. The first is local government; the second, which is more encouraging, is the ombudsperson. I am pleased that the Secretary of State has agreed to look at merging the ombudspersons—we have too many at the moment—but we need to make sure that that ombudsperson has the authority to rectify matters in a timely manner, one that still allows people to go to the courts if they wish to pursue that method of redress.

It troubles me that the landlord’s notice period has not been changed from two months. In my view, that notice period should be four months, and importantly, tenants should have the flexibility to move out during a notice period: if a tenant is given notice and moves out the next week, they should not be liable for two months’ worth of rent. That seems wrong to me.

Turning to protection periods, tenants will have protection from eviction for the first six months of their tenancy. Currently, they have six months after they sign each new assured shorthold tenancy, meaning that long-term tenants might have fewer protections than they do at the moment. Renters need to be protected: one proposal is to give them two years’ protection, which is a very good idea that we should explore in Committee.

On rent increases, we must ensure that we do not face a wave of economic evictions. Otherwise, what will happen is that the landlord will whack up the rent, and someone will have to move. The rental tribunal’s decisions being tied to markets means that an increase will be considered valid if the final rent aligns with market rates in local areas. That is clearly unaffordable for the LHA rate, which is under 30%—I remind colleagues that in 2010, that rate was 50%. It has been decreased year after year, and we need to address that. The Bill is also in danger of failing to address the “no DSS” benefit discrimination and the rampant guarantor discrimination that happens all the time in the rental sector, as well as affordability checks, which are used as methods of economic discrimination. Those problems also need to be addressed in the Bill.

I am a fan of the theory behind the property portal, but I fear that it might end up being like the bad landlords list, which never really worked and was never enforced. I appreciate that there are fines for not registering a property, but those fines should be paid to the tenant, as is the case with the deposit protection schemes. That would encourage tenants to make sure that their landlord is registered—they would receive recompense if the landlord was not. We cannot have local authorities doing all the checking: they just do not have the resources at the moment. We need everyone to be able to support these reforms.

[Mrs Elphicke]

My co-chair of the APPG on this subject is making some very important points. Could he further develop the important principle of the tenant being compensated for some of the no-fault or other fines that he has mentioned?

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

I would love to, but we do not have much time. However, there needs to be some discussion about what compensation someone will be given if they are no-fault evicted: for example, should they be given two months’ compensation, which could pay for a deposit and the first month’s rent in their new property? If the landlord has not registered, and the tenant is then evicted because their landlord has failed to be a good landlord—which is, of course, one of the grounds—what compensation will that person receive, enabling them to move into new, decent accommodation? Their money is tied up in the deposit and in having paid the rent. There needs to be some serious thought about how we compensate tenants so that they can move on in the private rented sector. Some people have also said that the property portal might be a back-door way of getting rid of selective licencing, which would be a great mistake.

The real story of these reform methods is the work of tens of thousands of hard-working activists, advice workers, policy leaders and organisations up and down this country, many of them in the Renters Reform Coalition, to which I give much praise. We are close to significant reform, but we must be vigilant.