Renters’ Rights Bill

Lord Wolfson of Tredegar Excerpts

Monday 28th April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, in previous contributions to the Committee, I made the point that our objective should be to increase supply and simultaneously reduce demand. I think we are now facing a situation in which we are doing everything in our power to decrease supply. The amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Thornhill and Lady Scott, are all basically meritorious in their own way, but they are all trying to solve a problem that we foresee. It does not have to be thought about as something that may happen as a remote possibility: it is almost a certainty and therefore has to be addressed.

There are other things that I think the Government are doing that are decreasing supply. The prospect of a landlord entering into the relationship with a tenant is even further off-put by these measures in the uncertainty that they could be left with no income for very long periods of time and tenants could find themselves stranded if they cannot go to a court and have the thing settled.

I also raised with the Minister the ECHR implications. There is yet another matter that is arising: there are reports that the Government are effectively talking out of both sides of their mouth at once. Here they are telling us that we have to get rid of Section 21 as we do not want agreed-term tenancies; on the other hand, it appears that the Government are going to landlords and offering them up to five-year tenancies if they house asylum seekers. You cannot have it both ways. The Minister told me that you could not discriminate between one tenant and another, but in fact that is precisely what we are doing. We are introducing a new class of tenant—a tenant who is in a superior position to the ordinary tenants we have at the moment. There is a great deal of uncertainty around this. Common sense dictates that this matter of the courts has to be addressed, and the very fact that we are having to burden the courts with our legislation tells us that perhaps there is something fundamentally wrong with this in the first place.

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, I speak in support of Amendments 279 and 280 in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, who is unfortunately unable to be in his place today. I hoped to have added my name to them, but I think I got to the Public Bill Office after the Marshalled List had gone to print. These amendments, together with others in this group, address an issue that is central to the Bill: the capacity of the courts. I declare at the outset my interest as somebody who benefits from rental income from residential property, as set out in the register.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

I just want to come back to the estimated five-year implementation period that the Minister responded to. That arose from conversations with people who have had a lifetime of professional involvement in legal processes, so I would not brush it aside too early. I have been on the sharp end of a number of these sorts of IT projects that get built. If you build anything, you always double the budget and double the time you are told it is going to take; anybody who has built anything knows that—I will not touch on R&R.

The Minister has told us a number of times that the Government are fully focused—a phrase that has been used a number of times. I do not wish to be discourteous, but it sounds like the Government are being fully optimistic, almost to the point of naivety, on this. These are probing amendments. There is a general agreement, including from the Government, that there really is a problem here that needs to be solved. There is no dispute about it being a problem. I urge that, before we get to Report, we need a crisp, specific, clear and credible statement about what exactly will be done to resource this properly, because our current court system is not a model of swiftness and efficiency, and it is hard to see how this will be magically transformed.

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

I will follow on from that so the Minister can reply to both. I retain a certain fondness for my former department, and I know that the budget of the Ministry of Justice is extremely tight. I have not seen any scope in that budget for the expected increase in the courts’ workload that the Bill will generate. The Minister said she will work very closely with the MoJ, and I know that, when I was an MoJ Minister, that meant that people would work closely with me by telling me that I needed to spend money from my budget on what they wanted. Can I therefore take it that, when she says she will work very closely with the MoJ, what she actually means is that, if the MoJ needs money to do what the Bill requires, it will come from her budget?