Immigration Bill

Debate between Lord Best and Lord Taylor of Holbeach

Wednesday 12th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

Yes, I can confirm that. An agricultural tenancy or a house occupied in connection with any employment would clearly be covered. However, it should not be forgotten that the owner of that property, as an employer, would have already checked the person’s entitlement to be in occupation.

[Lord Best]

My Lords, I am grateful for support for the amendments in differing degrees from all around the House, including the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby, who makes the point that it is already incredibly difficult for overseas students to find anywhere to live that they can afford in London—and in other cities. We must not make life more difficult by putting up a new barrier that puts landlords off; that is such an important and fundamental point.

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, who raised a couple of significant points. The Rent a Room scheme that we already have is getting a bit tired; this is the opportunity to let a room in your house and pay no tax—indeed, fill in no forms and just get on with the letting on your own. It will make a difference to the individual who owns that property if having to check the immigration status of anyone whom they take in is added to the requirements on them. We need to look at the Rent a Room scheme again. The tax threshold—the amount you can receive in rent from someone in your own home—has not been changed for something like 11 years; we have to revise that. This is an important moment to look at that. The case is similar for lodgers and guests—these look like awfully murky waters. The Minister said that he would respond in writing, which will be helpful.

The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, picked up on having approved verifying bodies that take all the hassle away from landlords—indeed, that take it away from the Home Office. However, she felt that it would be better to produce guidance and let landlords do their own thing. A voluntary scheme means that landlords who want to use it would just get on with doing so. Some 60% of private renting is through local agents. Rather than agents having their own mini-schemes—how many agents will become expert enough at this?—a central approved body that can verify people’s status would cut the cost to the landlord, and that might be passed on to the tenant. It would give landlords greater reassurance. I declare an interest: I chair the Property Ombudsman, which looks after letting agents and estate agents and the complaints about them. In the world of property ombudsman-ery, there is a system of the Secretary of State approving certain bodies as ombudsmen. That works well: it means that people can join a scheme knowing that it is properly approved, so people can stand behind it. Applying that technique in this field could be a clever move to help everybody to get this right.

The Minister made some important points. He underlined that the student lettings amendment that will be brought forward on Report will be a really good one. We will look at it with care, but it sounds as though it will do a great deal of what we hope that it will. On people being placed with a private landlord by an agency such as Crisis, a charity that takes potentially homeless people and persuades an individual landlord somewhere to take them on, he was not quite able to give me the reassurance that I had hoped for that that would be treated—as I understand it—like a hostel specifically for the homeless. These are specialist schemes in which the vetting will be done by Crisis. To say to the landlord, “I am sorry, we are unable to take away from you the responsibility for checking the migration status of the people we are bringing”, just adds another difficulty when it is difficult enough to get landlords to take in people, even with rent guarantees and other useful techniques. It would therefore be good to talk about that further.

I am grateful to the Minister for earlier discussions and his agreement that we should jointly explore some of these matters further. I look forward to such meetings and, in the light of his reassurances, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.