Renters’ Rights Bill

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I find myself in an unusual situation, almost feeling that I am making a maiden speech. After 16 years on the Front Bench, being a freed-up Back-Bencher is a bit of a shock: you are free to think, but there is nothing you have to do. Reflecting on advice I received from a Conservative Peer when I first came into the House, it was put to me that the role is one of scrutiny, and the advice I received was to do that thoroughly. He said that the way to do it thoroughly was to choose a Bill and see it through from beginning to end—and I have chosen this Bill.

To equip myself to participate, I have read around the Bill, particularly the Library briefing, but I do recognise that I have much more to learn. Nevertheless, it seems that this area has three problems: price, quality and security. Over recent years, rent increases exceeding wage increases has made people poorer: in particular, it has made poor people poorer. The Bill would seem to make a modest impact, at best, on that.

On quality, the Bill would seem to make a more significant input. Clearly, from the news stories that one hears from time to time, the issue of quality is important to the minority of tenants who find themselves with rogue landlords who ignore their obligations.

It is security that seems to be the problem that is most comprehensively covered by this Bill, and I am very pleased by that. Insecurity must be very difficult to live with. I cannot really understand it. My experience of renting goes way back to when I was a child in the late 1940s, the 1950s and the early 1960s. I lived in a council house; it was not a wonderful palace but it was perfectly adequate. In those days, rents were controlled and there was security of tenure. The day-to-day thinking about it was not in any way significantly different from owning your own house.

Since 1968, I have been privileged to live in a house that I have owned—or, at least, have owned in some sort of relationship with a building society—so to feel what it is like to be an insecure tenant today is very difficult. I cannot find a better word than “horrible”; I guess that is how it must be. There is the anxiety of not knowing where you are going to sleep next week or next month, the depression it must bring and the mental health problems that come with it. This leads to things beyond the problem of renting, such as homelessness and rough sleeping—and one has to recognise that rough sleeping leads to early death.

It has even changed the pattern of our behaviours in society. Nowadays, two-wage families are starting either not to have children or to have them very late, which is exacerbating the growing demographic crisis in this country. I am sure that, by the end of this process and after scrutiny, I will be convinced to support the Bill, but we must hit the price problem: we must build the 1.5 million houses we have promised and we must build the right sort of houses.