Tenancies (Reform) Bill

Matthew Offord Excerpts

Friday 28th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Teather]

That can be extremely frustrating, both for MPs and for those in local councils and in citizens advice bureaux, who may see the same problem in the same property over and over again. I want to place on the record my thanks to the citizens advice bureaux in Brent, which have campaigned on this issue for a long time, and to Generation Rent, which has been very supportive. I also wish to pay tribute to the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West for all his help and for the support of his officials in championing the Bill across government. I well remember from my time as a Minister that getting cross-government agreement on anything requires sustained focus from a Minister, and I am extremely grateful that the Government will be supporting the Bill today.

[Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)]

Although I support the Bill, a lot of emphasis has been put on so-called “rogue” landlords and, having been a landlord, I know that things are not always as they are portrayed Will the hon. Lady reassure the House, and reassure me, that the Bill will not allow rogue tenants to frustrate the process of eviction when they do not comply with their tenancy agreements?

[Sarah Teather]

Absolutely; the Bill has been carefully drafted to make sure that spurious complaints cannot be a reason to frustrate the eviction process. In addition to the clauses relating to retaliatory eviction, the Bill contains other clauses about simplifying the process for applying for a section 21 notice to make it easier for landlords who are operating entirely legitimately to make sure that they comply with the law. At the moment, we often have situations where a landlord may serve a section 21 notice and find that they have fallen foul of a technicality when they were operating perfectly legitimately. So the Bill is not all about skewing everything in favour of the tenant; it contains some simplifying elements, too.

[Sarah Teather]

I am inclined to say that the hon. Gentleman has made his point and move on.

I want to stress that the Bill is not an outright attack on section 21. Members of the House will have very different and varied views on the future of section 21. Some will think that it should be touched as little as possible, and others will want to reform it significantly or even get rid of no-fault notices. The Bill is not about getting rid of section 21; it is about operating within the current legal structures and trying to protect tenants who, at the moment, find that they cannot uphold their right to live in a decent property. Although it is stated elsewhere in the law that landlords ought to comply, at the moment they do not have to, because they can simply get rid of tenants when they complain. If Members want to remove section 21 notices, they will have to bring in their own Bill, because that is not what this one does. I want to make that clear, as I have done to landlord organisations. This is a relatively moderate change that I hope will protect tenants, not an enormous ripping up of the current legislative framework.

[Dr Offord]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way again; she is being very gracious. There is legislation that allows environmental health officers to inspect properties. Does she feel that that offers adequate protection, or is this legislation vital?

[Sarah Teather]

The problem for environmental health officers—I was going to make this point later—is that, as many of them told Citizens Advice for a report in 2007, they know that the consequence of intervening is often that the tenant is evicted. That prevents councils from making full use of the powers available to them. There really is no point having legislation that gives councils powers to intervene if they are too afraid to use them to drive up standards for fear of ending up with tenants being evicted. Again, this is about trying to ensure, through a small tweak, that the existing law works better.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Gilbert (St Austell and Newquay) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to join so many colleagues from so many different parts of the country in this very important debate. I hope to be among so many colleagues from all parts of the House who seek to right a wrong and address injustice. All of us have constituencies to serve, often in far flung parts of the country—were it not for this debate, I would be attending the opening of the refurbished Treverbyn town hall, and I wish my constituents well in that—proving the point made by the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) that this problem affects not only London and metropolitan areas, but constituencies such as mine and more rural parts of our country.

This matter is not just an urban phenomenon. It is often a lazy assumption that private renting is just a city-based phenomenon, but there are more than 18,000 private renters in my constituency. That is the same number of people who live in St Austell, one of the largest towns in my constituency. As hon. Members know, conditions in the private rented sector can be poor. I have had constituents in my surgery in tears because of problems with damp, boilers and hazard notices being served on their property, and, as the hon. Lady said, a lack of legal clout to redress the power balance between tenant and landlord. I am keen to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather) on introducing the Bill, because it provides us with the opportunity to debate and address the power imbalance at the heart of the relationship between tenant and landlord.

The private rented sector has expanded dramatically in the past 30 years. There are now 9 million private renters in England, but, as hon. Members have said, legislation has not moved with the times. Demand far outstrips supply, reducing the power of consumers, the renters, and leaving them vulnerable to the malpractice that exists in the industry. Hon. Members have been clear that it is the malpractice of a minority of landlords, but to ensure good standards for everybody we need to address malpractice where we find it. We must also congratulate landlords who respond well to the needs of their tenants, and treat them in a fair and equitable way.

We have ourselves partly to blame: we have been slow to react to the increase in the private rented sector and the problems that have come with it. As my hon. Friend said, more than 200,000 people have been either evicted or served with eviction notices in the past year alone. That is a considerable number. I am sure we have all had tenants with legitimate complaints about their homes coming to see us in our surgeries over many years. The Bill is timely.

As I said to my hon. Friend in an intervention, the Bill is also proportionate. If we consider how tenants are protected in other areas, we see similar levels of protection to those proposed in the Bill. If a landlord withholds a deposit, tenants cannot be issued with a section 21 notice for six months. That is logical and fair. If a landlord has failed to license a property properly, tenants cannot be issued with a section 21 notice for six months. That, too, is logical and fair. The same should be true when tenants make legitimate complaints regarding the failure of landlords to carry out repairs they are legally expected to carry out. Tenants should not receive a section 21 notice for six months—logical, fair, proportionate and exactly what the Bill proposes.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Tessa Munt), who is not in her place at the moment, on securing a motion on this issue at the Liberal Democrat party conference in October. More importantly, I congratulate those from all sides of the House on their support, across parties, for the Bill. Occasions when the House unites to address an injustice show Parliament at its best. I think we should see more of that and less of the partisanship we are sometimes prone to in this place.

[Dr Offord]

I look forward to the hon. Gentleman voting with us on Monday.

[Stephen Gilbert]

Well, we can look forward it. [Laughter.]

Rogue landlords should not be able to deprive tenants of the fundamental right to enjoy their property in the way we all hope to enjoy the place we live in. However, we should also remember that section 21 notices are not the only possession rights that landlords have; they will retain their section 8 rights as well, meaning that tenants who break their agreement with the landlord—through antisocial behaviour, for example—could still be legitimately evicted. This would instil balance and fairness in the relationship. Good tenants and good landlords would be protected, and landlords who have problems with rogue tenants would still have legal redress.

Landlords would also benefit from the local authority’s ability to be an independent judge of legitimate complaints. Colleagues will be perhaps too familiar with improvement and hazard notices. I have come across them many times in my casework, so I am sure others have as well. These notices would act as a fail-safe in respect of perhaps the biggest concern landlords have: whether people can make spurious claims to stay in a property. By ensuring that complaints are verified by the local authority, good landlords will be protected.