Crown Tenancies Bill

Mark Pawsey Excerpts

Committee Debate: House of Commons
Wednesday 1st March 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)]

it is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies, especially on St David’s day. I am conscious that other members of the Committee represent Welsh constituencies, and I am sure that we all share in the Welsh celebration. Wales is also covered in the Bill, as the Committee will have noted.

I thank hon. Friends and hon. Members for attending this sitting, because we have had a flurry of private Members’ Bills getting through, fortunately, into the system and reaching Committee stage, and I understand the pressure that that puts on Ministers, Parliamentary Private Secretaries and Members, who are all keen to see us make progress. In that spirit, I hope that I may continue to count on the support of Members as the Bill proceeds on its passage through the House.

For historical reasons, people known as Crown tenants who rent public properties have few legal protections. Most people who rent from a private landlord are given an assured shorthold tenancy. During the initial six months they have security of tenure, which means the landlord may evict the tenant only if he or she has done something wrong, such as failing to pay their rent or committing antisocial behaviour. After that the landlord may obtain possession on so-called no fault grounds, but only after giving 60 days’ notice. Crown tenants are specifically excluded from the assured tenancy regime, which means that the only statutory protection enjoyed by them is that provided by the Protection from Eviction Act 1977. That allows the landlord to get possession at any time without having to give reasons after giving the tenant just 28 days’ notice. Surely it cannot be right that some tenants get less protection than others simply because they rent from a Government Department. It is time to remove the anomaly in the interest of fairness and that, fundamentally, is what the Bill is designed to do.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on this very important Bill to give Crown tenants the same protection as private tenants enjoy. How many Crown tenants are there, and will she give us a practical example?

[Wendy Morton]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that question. He championed this Bill in the Session last year, so I am pleased he is in Committee today. He makes an interesting point with his question about how many Crown tenancies there are. It has been estimated that about 500 Crown tenants fall into this category. Most Departments have a number of Crown tenants—examples include the Forestry Commission, the Department for Transport and of course the Ministry of Defence, which I will come on to later because its accommodation is slightly different.

At the moment Crown tenancies probably number in the hundreds. Members of the armed forces who live in service accommodation are not Crown tenants; they get a licence agreement, not a tenancy. However, the Ministry of Defence has plans from 2018 to grant tenancies to service personnel and their families who occupy service family accommodation, which means that some 45,000 service personnel in England and Wales will become Crown tenants and will benefit from the provisions in the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Housing and Planning (Gavin Barwell)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies, I think for the first time. I wish you a happy St David’s day. Some hon. Members may not be aware of your familiarity with Croydon Central as the former Member for my constituency, and how St David’s day is celebrated there,.

I start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills on promoting this important and welcome Bill and her skill in steering it successfully thus far. Several members of the Committee can testify that private Member’s Bills are not always easy to chart through. Those of us who have tried it wish we had had the success on Second Reading that this one enjoyed.

I pay tribute also to my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby. As my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills said, he sought previously to bring the Bill forward and it is good to see him on the Committee where it is making progress today.

It is my responsibility to welcome and support the Bill on behalf of the Government. It sits well within the wider sense of Government housing policy. We recently published a housing White Paper in which we made it clear that trying to improve the conditions that people experience right now in the private rented sector is an important objective for the Government. The Bill fits neatly into that wider ambition set out in the White Paper.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills pointed out, the Bill is about promoting fairness and ensuring that tenants of Government Departments have similar protections to people in the private rented sector. The Government do not think that Crown tenants should have less protection than that available to private tenants, just because they happen to be tenants of public bodies.

The assured shorthold tenancy has been the default type of tenancy since 1997. It gives landlords significant flexibility and control to manage their tenancies, so there is no longer any risk that bringing Crown tenancies within the assured tenancy regime could compromise in any way Government Departments’ flexibility and control in managing the properties they own. However, the Bill provides exemptions for some Crown tenancies from the assured shorthold tenancy in specified circumstances as an additional safeguard, to which my hon. Friend referred. We should seize this opportunity to get rid of an outdated anomaly and put Crown tenants on a similar footing to the majority of tenants in the private rented sector.

As my hon. Friend said, while the number of Crown tenants is currently small, the MOD’s plans to move its service family accommodation from licences to tenancies in April 2018, when we seek to commence this legislation, will mean that up to 45,000 more Crown tenants will benefit from the statutory protection provided in the Bill. That is a significant number of people who will benefit.

To answer the question from the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth, my understanding is that we are talking about service family accommodation properties. Who manages those properties is not the issue. It is not all of the MOD’s accommodation; it is about 45,000 service family accommodation properties. Service personnel who are occupying single living accommodation and certain types of accommodation that are provided for specific roles will continue to be granted licences. We are talking here about service family accommodation. I hope that that is helpful to my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay and clarifies the position.

The Bill will contribute to the Government’s commitment under the armed forces covenant to ensure that members of the service community do not experience any disadvantage as a result of their service to this country.

[Mark Pawsey]

Will the Minister clarify the point about single living accommodation? Clearly, we would not want the MOD to be restricted in its flexibility when service personnel are sent overseas on exercises and so on. Will he clarify that this is for family accommodation and will not affect accommodation for the large number of single service personnel?