Renters (Reform) Bill

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 24th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jacob Young]

I think I have been quite clear that it is important that we see that the courts are ready for these reforms. The Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer), is here on the Front Bench with me. He and the MOJ are working at pace to ensure that the courts are ready for the reforms we are introducing. The hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) asks about a specialist housing court. We do not believe that that is the best way to improve the court process for possession—a view shared by the judiciary who responded to our call for evidence.

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough) (Con)]

The Chair of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee, the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), rightly said that this should have happened five years ago, but I gently say that in those five years we have had the coronavirus pandemic, which is the main thing that has slowed down the process of improving the courts. I strongly encourage the Minister not to rush into doing this prematurely, because it would benefit neither tenants nor landlords if he did.

[Jacob Young]

I do not think that it will surprise you, Madam Deputy Speaker, to learn that I entirely agree with my hon. Friend, whom I thank for making those points.

Government new clause 30 will enable the Government to assess the effect that our new tenancy system is having on county courts before our reforms are rolled out more widely, giving us confidence that the sector is ready. I am happy to share with colleagues that we are exploring whether serious eviction cases, such as for antisocial behaviour, can be prioritised in court listings. We will consult on options following Royal Assent.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Lucas]

It is four months since the Bill concluded in Committee and five years since the Government promised to legislate for renters’ rights, so I start by saying that it is totally unacceptable that it has taken so long for the Renters (Reform) Bill to be on Report. It is deplorable for nearly a million renters to have been issued with section 21 eviction notices in England since the Government promised to abolish them, according to recent YouGov data. Renters have been badly let down by this delay, and aspects of the legislation before us continue to let them down.

My amendment 12 would require energy performance certificates for properties to be provided to the database operator and for the details to be recorded in the portal. This simple amendment would make a big difference. It would recognise that information is power and allow tenants to know whether the home they are about to rent will be damp and leaky or warm and efficient.

Amendment 12 also builds on the existing rules that require EPCs to be commissioned before properties are put on the market and for them to be clearly displayed in adverts in commercial media. Fairness and logic demand that renters should be able easily to compare energy efficiency information when considering properties to rent. A cold and damp home can end up costing renters dearly, both in high energy bills and health and wellbeing impacts.

Renters in cold and damp homes run an increased risk of problems associated with mould and of health conditions such as asthma and heart disease, as well as of poor mental health. We all know that the UK has some of the leakiest homes in Europe and that tenants are particularly exposed to high global gas prices, because the private rented sector is the least energy efficient of any tenure. A staggering quarter of renting households are living in fuel poverty today, so urgent action is essential to improve standards across the sector and to ensure that all renters have a warm and decent home in which to live.

It therefore beggars belief that the Prime Minister announced last September that he was scrapping the requirement to upgrade energy efficiency standards in private rented properties to EPC grade C. That was despite it being essential to deliver on our climate and fuel poverty targets. That upgrade would save tenants more than £250 a year, even at so-called normal prices, according to the Climate Change Committee. As well as harming renters, that regressive move was also contrary to the wishes of landlords, 80% of whom are in favour of stricter energy efficiency regulations.

My amendment 13 seeks to tackle the crippling private rents that so many people are paying. In Brighton and Hove, in which my constituency rests, a new study of more than 50,000 renters found that tenants in the city were spending a scandalous 56.9% of their pay on rent, making it the most expensive city in England in which to rent. As the Bill stands, the measures on rent increases are wholly inadequate. They rely on a resource-intensive and time-consuming appeals process that could even see tenants worse off at the end of it, because the tribunal would have the power to impose a higher rent than the one the tenant is appealing. That is frankly outrageous and goes directly against the promise made in the Secretary of State’s White Paper, which said:

“We will prevent the Tribunal increasing rent beyond the amount landlords initially asked for when they proposed a rent increase.”

Amendment 13 would simply make good that broken promise by ensuring that the rent payable after a tribunal determination can be no higher than the rent initially imposed by the landlord in the notice served on the tenant. One would have thought that that would be pretty straightforward. Given that the landlord is proposing that rent level in the first place, that must surely be the upper limit of what the tribunal can determine. The Secretary of State obviously understands that principle, since he put in in his own White Paper.

The removal of this commitment in the Bill shows the Government are determined to bend over backwards to tip the balance of power even further in favour of landlords. In short, amendment 13 would get rid of what seems to be a deliberate disincentive to discourage tenants from using the process that is supposed to protect them from unfair rent hikes. In the absence of a national system for rent controls with local flexibility, which is what we really need, amendment 13 is a modest rebalancing of the rent tribunal process, and I would welcome the Minister’s consideration and response in summing up the debate.

There is limited time in the debate, but I very much support the amendments seeking to prohibit evictions within two years of the beginning of a tenancy where the landlord wants to sell or move family in. As the Bill stands, tenants can be served two months’ notice just four months after a tenant has moved in, making a mockery of ministerial claims to improve security of tenure. I also sincerely hope that Ministers will accept amendment 14, which addresses the deeply concerning fact that the notice period for eviction under the new landlord grounds is just two months. This amendment extends it to four months in recognition of the huge difficulty many people face in finding somewhere suitable and affordable to rent when they are evicted, which, as we know, is a major cause of homelessness.

[Neil O’Brien]

I have never been a landlord, but I have been a private renter and I greatly welcome some of the measures in the Bill as they would have helped me and other private renters a lot. I was offered some extraordinary properties when I was a private renter. I remember that one had dog mess all over the floor, while another in Elephant and Castle had bare wires hanging out of the wall and a gas cooker hanging off the wall. I welcome the extension of the decent homes standard to the private rented sector through this legislation, and it is striking how little controversy there has been about that given how big a deal it is. The proportion of private rented homes that have a major category 1 hazard in them has already come right down, from 24% when we came into office in 2010 to just 12% now, but that is still too high, and it is three times higher than in the social rented sector. So it is great that today we are pressing on with fixing this.

The Government amendments we are debating today are welcome. They strike a good balance between the interests of tenants and of landlords. For example, new clause 30, which makes the commencement of the end of no-fault evictions dependent on county courts being ready, is sensible. The slow recovery of the courts from the covid backlog has been frustrating, and there is a much wider question about how we can get rid of old-fashioned court practices that slow things down. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), Chair of the Justice Committee, made important points about the paper-based nature still of a lot of what goes on there.

However, a lot of good ideas can be wrecked if we do not get the implementation just right and my hon. and learned Friend also mentioned that it currently takes about 55 weeks from commencement to possession, which is much too long. Although I agree with what we are doing here in terms of no-fault evictions, it is a big deal and it is right and reasonable that those who let out properties do at least know that they can rely on a slick and well-functioning court process before we bring this measure in. Even those on the Opposition Front Bench said the courts were recovering from the pandemic, rather than being fully recovered, so I think they recognise that up to a point as well.

The Government have made a range of other sensible reforms in the new clauses before us to ensure that there is fairness for landlords as well as tenants, including new clause 15 which gives those who let out properties some confidence in the first six months. There are the new student grounds as well, and I note that even landlord groups such as the National Residential Landlords Association are now saying we should get on with this legislation, so I think this is about right.

A large number of Government amendments are before us today, but the overall effect is to get a good balance in the legislation. I know some have concerns about the end of section 21, but many countries have a similar system and the sky has not fallen in. Germany, Austria, Denmark, Switzerland and the Netherlands all banned no-fault evictions, and they have a higher share of private renting than us, and in the US and Canada states including California and Quebec do the same and the sky has not fallen in there either. Even Scotland has had this since 2017 and, again, although it has done some other things that are pretty unwise in terms of rent control, the sky has not fallen in.

Landlords will still be able to cite a lot of reasons to ensure that they can get their property back. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Mrs Elphicke), who is not in her place, suggested that perhaps there were still too many, but I think it is essential that people can get their property back. The end of section 21 changes the balance a bit, recognising that it is no small thing to ask people to move homes.

There are more people living in the private rented sector with children these days, and it is hugely disruptive to have to move. I remember how, in a place that I was renting, we were all moved out because the landlord was supposedly going to do massive works, but he ended up installing about 1 square metre of linoleum and let the place out again for the same rent. It was just a huge amount of disruption to no particular end. For those in a more vulnerable position than I was, it is not a small thing to be asked to move home, so by ending section 21 but still enabling landlords to get control of their property when they need it, we are striking the right balance.