Renters’ Rights Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Tuesday 14th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, I support Motion C1 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell. I repeat my interest, in that my wife owns properties in London which she rents out, from which I occasionally benefit. I thank the Minister for meeting the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, and me to discuss the matter. Her engagement with us was much appreciated.

I want to emphasise what the Minister in the House of Commons said when the Lords amendment was defeated. He said:

“We recognise that there will be occasions when landlords regain vacant possession of their property using ground 1A but are unable subsequently to sell it despite repeated attempts to do so”.—[Official Report, Commons, 8/9/25; col. 637.]


So the Government expressly acknowledge that there will be landlords who are unable to sell, having intended to do so, and who are acting in perfect good faith. The issue is whether it is really appropriate in this Bill to penalise such good faith landlords by preventing them renting out their property for 12 months because of abuse—and there is abuse—by other landlords.

I suggest to the House that this is a plain and obvious case of a disproportionate sanction. It is a sanction against those who have done no wrong and who have acted in perfect good faith. This Government are often eager to emphasise the importance of human rights law. It is important to acknowledge that human rights law does not just protect prisoners and illegal entrants; it also protects law-abiding citizens who own property and who wish to rent it out.

It is a basic principle of the common law, adopted by the Human Rights Act, that any interference with the right to property requires a fair balance between the interests of the property owner and the interests of the community. I suggest to the House that to penalise a landlord who has acted in good faith by preventing them renting out their own property for 12 months when they have done no wrong defies the need for a fair balance. It is manifestly disproportionate. The modest amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, to reduce the period to six months is fair and balanced, and if he divides the House, as he has indicated he will, he will certainly have my support.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

I do not know if the noble Lord is wanting to speak. I am perfectly prepared to give way to him, although I seem to have the Floor of the House.

The noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, made a very powerful case, which was well supported by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. The noble Lord and others will remember that I supported him on this measure in Committee, and I think also on Report. It covers a wider ground than just the landlord who has been unable to sell. There is another ground, where the landlord has got possession of a property to put members of their family in. I cited the example of a landlord having done that for, let us say, parents coming in, one of whom then has a stroke, meaning that the landlord then needs to do something with the property that involves putting it back on the market. In that situation, the landlord is penalised in exactly the same way as when a landlord fails in a genuine attempt to sell, as the noble Lord has described.

In Committee, and I think also on Report, I proposed a better way of dealing with this problem: a prohibition on any landlord putting property on the market again at a higher price than the price at the time of the change of ownership. I should have succeeded in that argument, but I did not. However, I am certainly supporting the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, as supported by noble Lord, Lord Pannick. I hope that your Lordships have heard the arguments from the noble Lords and will support them on this issue.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Motion D1 in my name, which the Minister referred to sympathetically at the beginning of our debate.

As we have heard, the Bill currently precludes a landlord who gives notice to a tenant because he wants to sell from re-letting that property for 12 months if that sale falls through. The Government want all tenants to be protected against abusive eviction by landlords, and I have no difficulty with that principle. However, in the case of shared owners, there are already safeguards against such abuse that are not there for conventional landlords, and their sales are more likely to fall through, through no fault of their own.

The amendment exempting shared owners from this provision was carried on Report in your Lordships’ House by the largest majority of any amendment to the Bill. While sympathy was expressed by Ministers in the other place for the plight of shared owners, the amendment was overturned there. Last week, the Government tabled their Motion asking your Lordships not to insist on that amendment. On 10 October, the Minister followed that up by writing to all Peers, hoping that they would support her Motion not to insist. Then last week, we had a Damascene conversion, and here I obviously had more good fortune than the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell. I am most grateful to the Minister for the time she spent with me on this last week, and indeed earlier, and to Matthew Pennycook and the officials. The amendment in my name is the outcome of those discussions and represents a deal that I can accept.

To briefly summarise the case, shared owners are social housing residents. They own a portion of their property and rent the rest of it from the housing association. They purchased a share of their home because they could not afford to buy on the open market. They are a distinct, legally identifiable group of people, and they are actually precluded from subletting without permission from their registered provider.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Young of Cookham]

At end insert, “and do propose Amendments 19B to 19D in lieu—

19B: Clause 15, page 25, line 10, at end insert—
“(3) Subsection (4) applies where the relevant person relies on Ground 1A and—
(a) before the assured tenancy was entered into, a relevant person had given the tenant under the assured tenancy (“T”) a written statement that the landlord under that tenancy (“L”) is a shared owner of the dwelling-house and that section 16E(2) or (3) might not apply to a subsequent letting, or grant of a licence, of the dwelling-house (because of this subsection and subsection (4)),
(b) when the assured tenancy was entered into, L was a shared owner of the dwelling-house, and
(c) before the date specified in the notice as mentioned in section 8(3)(b), a relevant person had given the landlord under the shared ownership lease of the dwelling-house a written statement that L intends to assign L’s interest under that shared ownership lease.
(4) Section 16E(2) or (3) does not prohibit a relevant person from carrying out a controlled activity if—
(a) before the relevant person carries out that activity—
(i) the dwelling-house has been valued by a member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors in connection with the assignment of L’s interest under the shared ownership lease, or
(ii) L has advertised, or made an arrangement under which another person has advertised, that the dwelling-house is or may be available for acquisition by way of the assignment of L’s interest under the shared ownership lease, and (b) when the relevant person carries out that activity, L is a shared owner of the dwelling-house.
(5) In subsections (3) and (4)—
“controlled activity” means an activity that would (if subsection (4) did not apply) be prohibited by section 16E(2) or (3); “shared owner”, in relation to a dwelling-house, means a person—
(a) who is the tenant of the dwelling-house under a shared ownership lease, and
(b) whose share in the premises demised by the lease is less than 100%; and for this purpose, the tenant’s share in the premises demised is the tenant’s initial share in those premises, plus any additional share or shares in those premises which the tenant has acquired; “shared ownership lease” means a lease—
(a) granted on payment of a premium calculated by reference to a percentage of the value of the premises demised by the lease or of the cost of providing them, or
(b) under which the tenant (or the tenant’s personal representatives) will or may be entitled to a sum calculated by reference, directly or indirectly, to the value of those premises.”