Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill

Nickie Aiken Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 27th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sir Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I rise to speak to new clause 24, which is in my name. It was also considered in Committee. I am most grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) for moving it there and to the Minister for his response. I am also grateful to the hon. Member for Loughborough (Jane Hunt) and the right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock) who have added their names to the new clause on the Order Paper.

I thank the Minister for his reply in Committee, but I think he missed the crucial central point of the amendment. At the moment, the risks of exposure to asbestos in a workplace are managed by the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012, which is monitored by the Health and Safety Executive. For every workplace under those regulations, there is a duty holder responsible for monitoring the condition of the asbestos. They are required to keep up-to-date records of the location and condition of all asbestos-containing materials, to provide that information to anybody liable to disturb the materials, and to develop a plan for managing any risks that arise.

Residential blocks with a commercial freeholder will generally also have a duty holder, because the block will have been for them a workplace, so it is covered by the Control of Asbestos Regulations. It is usually the freeholder or their agent who is the duty holder. That duty holder is responsible for all the common areas in the block, such as foyers and staircases.

The effectiveness of this whole regime is debatable. The sixth report in the 2021-22 Session of the Work and Pensions Committee expressed considerable reservations. It is doubtful, I think, that the Health and Safety Executive is doing enough to monitor compliance, and the assumption that leaving asbestos in place is better than removing it is increasingly questionable as the asbestos ages. None the less, there is at least a clear regime for managing the risks.

The concern that motivates this new clause is that, following a transfer of the kind made possible and facilitated by the Bill, there will no longer be a duty holder for the communal areas in such a block. At the moment there is, but the responsibility will be entirely extinguished, as far as I understand it, on transfer. The asbestos is still going to be there, the risks will remain, but nobody will any longer be responsible for managing them. Understandably, no individual resident will take on the responsibility, but there will be no corporate entity to do it either. In fact, it may be worse than that. The residents may well not be aware before the transfer is completed that they are taking on both a financial liability for managing the asbestos in the communal areas, and possibly a risk to life as well. It is important to bear it in mind that we are seeing 5,000 deaths per year at the moment as a result of past exposure to asbestos.

In his response in Committee, the Minister said that the amendment would

“duplicate the existing duty in regulation 4 of the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 for landlords to survey the common areas of their property”.—[Official Report, Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill Public Bill Committee, 30 January 2024; c. 461.]

However, the newly enfranchised property would not fall any longer under regulation 4. There would be no landlord to survey the common areas once the transfer has taken place.

New clause 24 aims to prevent this problem from occurring. It requires landlords to perform a detailed survey of the asbestos present in the building within three months of a transfer taking place and then requires the landlord to remove any asbestos that is there.There is a 150% tax relief for businesses removing asbestos from their premises, so removal will not be costly for landlords. It will save newly enfranchised leaseholders from a large and probably unexpected liability and a potentially lethal long-term risk. I hope that makes the case for this change clear.

I am grateful to the Minister for his assistance with the residents of Barrier Point in my constituency. I think we have a meeting in his office next month. Last night, I had my regular Zoom call with leaseholders from Waterside Park in my constituency. Before Christmas, we thought we had a clear way forward. Barratt, the builders, had signed up and Aviva, the current freeholder, was happy, but last night we learned of the requirement that the Building Safety Regulator to look at any proposal for a minimum of eight weeks, which will substantially delay the work that has been committed to. Will the Minister look at whether it is really necessary for residents who have been waiting so long for these problems to be resolved to wait another eight weeks?

[Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

I fully support the Government’s wish to overhaul the antiquated and feudal leasehold system in this country and address the imbalance of power between freeholders and leaseholders. I thank the Minister for his ongoing discussions with me about a number of issues I have with the Bill, and for attending the leasehold roundtable that I held recently with my constituents.

I would like the Government to abolish the system completely, but I understand that that will not happen with this Bill. I have therefore tabled an amendment and three new clauses that would improve the Bill further. New clause 12 would reduce the participation threshold required to claim the right to manage from 50% to 35%. That is a massive issue in Cities of London and Westminster. More than 1,300 properties in the City of London and an eye-watering 12,100 in Westminster have owners living abroad or are owned by companies using central London’s golden postcodes as a place to park their cash. That reduces the ability of leaseholders in those blocks to secure the 50% of signatures required to achieve the right to manage, as it is incredibly difficult to contact those overseas leaseholders for a meaningful discussion.

Let me give an example of that type of dilemma in my constituency. Residents in The Quadrangle in the Hyde Park Estate say that leaseholders in their block will struggle to meet the 50% participation threshold. They estimate that at least 40% of leaseholders in their block do not live in the building and are uncontactable. Accepting new clause 12 and lowering the threshold to 35% would give many more leaseholders living in similar blocks the chance to manage their buildings.

I commend the work that has been done on the Bill to support blocks that have shared commercial and residential usage. The Bill proposes to increase the proportion of commercial or non-residential space permitted in an individual block for a right to manage application from 25% to 50%, but I believe we can go even further. I have heard from many residents whose blocks will fail to qualify even after the threshold rises to 50%. For example, residents of 8 Artillery Row in Victoria believe that increasing the threshold to 50% does not go far enough, as the residential element of their block is lower than 50%. That is why amendment 17 is needed, as it would allow residents in a block with up to 75% commercial premises to apply for the right to manage.

New clause 14 is similarly designed to allow more leaseholders to strive for the right to manage, especially those in mixed-use buildings. Simply sharing a broom cupboard with a commercial property can disqualify them from claiming the right to manage. At Cambridge Court in Marylebone, for example, leaseholders striving to manage their block would benefit from the Government’s proposals to increase the non-residential threshold allowed in a building, but they are concerned that their ability to qualify for the right to manage would be undermined by the existence of a single shared car parking space in their building. My new clause 14 would amend the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002 by adopting recommendation 5 from the Law Commission’s “Right to Manage” report, which is to allow leaseholders in mixed-use buildings with shared services or underground car parks to exercise the right to manage.

Finally, my new clause 15 would correct the unintended consequences of the Building Safety Act 2022. That Act has interfered with the long-standing section 24 regime, which was a vital right for leaseholders. It introduced an accountable person mechanism that expressly banned section 24 managers from being the accountable person. Consequently, specially trained and vetted professional property managers willing to take on difficult sites have been barred from being the accountable person. That makes absolutely no sense, and it stripped leaseholders of an existing right. That could not have been the Government’s intention when they introduced the 2022 Act, which was intended to provide leaseholders with additional statutory protections. So many leaseholders in my constituency and across the country would benefit from applying for a section 24 manager, but they cannot risk it if they are in blocks of 18 metres or higher because of the accountable person regime issue arising from the Building Safety Act. It is imperative that our buildings are safe, that leaseholders are safe, and that the burden does not fall heavily on leaseholders.

I will not press my amendments to a vote, but I hope that the Government will consider what I have spoken about and work with me to introduce the measures in the other place. This is a watershed moment for the Government to prove that they understand the terrible treatment that leaseholders have faced and continue to face by incompetent freeholders, and to address the imbalance between freeholder and leaseholder. I hope that the Bill will deliver real change.

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

I rise to speak to new clause 1, which was tabled in my name, and in support of a number of new clauses and amendments tabled by right hon. and hon. Members from both sides of the House.

I tabled new clause 1 because, as was said by the hon. Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien), who is no longer in his place, fleecehold is a scam. It attempts to deal with the issue whereby a freeholder is trapped in a situation where they pay estate management charges for the areas around their development, be they roads, play areas or open spaces. Critically, the new clause also deals with the shared assets that might be in use to service their homes, such as ground source heat pumps, septic tanks or sewage pumps. I am sure that there are many instances in which the management company does a great job and charges reasonable fees for its work, but my inbox—like those of many hon. Members—contains horrifying examples of the management company, which is usually directly owned by or related to the developer in North Shropshire, failing to do a good job, or to do any sort of job at all.

There is a freeholder in my constituency, for example, who must obtain an information pack from their estate management company in order to sell their house. Despite repeated requests, my constituent has not received that information pack, so their sale has been significantly delayed and is at risk of falling through altogether. The management company is apparently just a shell—it does not respond to correspondence, hold annual general meetings or provide accounts—so the affected residents are powerless and cannot take control of the company and appoint a reliable professional to provide the services that they so desperately need. New clause 1 would allow them, where the management company has gone AWOL and will not respond to anything that they request of it, to take control of the company and do those things themselves.

The new clause also extends to assets, which may be more of a rural problem when it comes to shared estate charges. In one example in my constituency, a developer installed a ground source heat pump to provide all the heating and hot water for a barn conversion development that involved several houses in the same set of barns.

That developer has two separate companies: one is the management company through which he charges the owners of those houses for their electricity bill, and another, totally separate company that was nothing to do with the sale process, which is where he placed the heat pump. As such, he is able to cream off all the renewable heat incentive income for himself; he provides accounts to residents through the management company, but does not provide them with any information about the fundamental asset that is servicing their home. Those residents are unable to benefit from the renewable heat incentive that accrues from that asset, and do not know whether it is being properly maintained and serviced. They are unable to do so themselves—they have no rights in relation to that heat pump.

Proposed British Jewish History Month

Nickie Aiken Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House calls for the creation of a British Jewish History Month.

I thank the Backbench Business Committee, which agreed to the debate, and the more than 40 Members of Parliament from across the House who signed my application. In particular, I thank the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) and my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart) for attending the Backbench Business Committee to support me. I thought long and hard about the timing of the debate, particularly after the horrendous 7 October attacks and the rise in antisemitism in this country, with an increase in antisemitism of over 1,300% in London alone in the past year.

We cannot conflate British Jews with the state of Israel; being a British Jew means being a British citizen. That was really brought home to me when I met a group of British Jewish schoolchildren in November on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer). When I asked the teacher why 10-year-olds were wearing baseball caps, he told me that it was because they had to hide their kippah. I thought, how can we get to a state where British children are hiding their identities? It made me think that we have to celebrate the British Jewish community and thank them for the outstanding contribution that they have made to this country. I also thank Jonathan Abro, a constituent of mine, who also led me to think that it is time to change the narrative about the British Jewish community in this country. He was incensed by Westminster City Council’s newsletter on hate crime, which did not mention antisemitism.

I know that the Jewish community is interested in its own history—the Jewish Historical Society of England was established in Victorian times—but it is now time for the whole nation to celebrate the history of our Jewish friends and neighbours. The Jewish community is such a small one: 280,000 British citizens identified as Jewish in the 2021 census. That is 0.5% of our population. Compare that with the 6.5% of Muslims and 1.7% of Hindus.

For a small minority, the impact the British Jewish community has made in all walks of life in this country is outstanding, and that is why we need to establish a British Jewish history month. Jews throughout the centuries have arrived in the UK fleeing persecution and murder in other countries and have had to rebuild their lives here.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for securing the debate. Jews have contributed hugely to this country over many centuries. In fact, over 200 have served in this Chamber—218 by my count, but that could be contested—including 70 Labour Members of Parliament. I will briefly give an example of one: Manny Shinwell was a trade unionist who served here and in the other place until he was 101 and did great things in the Atlee Government, showing that we are right across the breadth and spread of the political establishment of the United Kingdom.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nickie Aiken]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. I will make reference to Jewish politicians in my speech.

Jews have often had to come to this country to rebuild their lives, and that was brought home to me particularly when reading Lord Danny Finkelstein’s book, “Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad”. Danny’s family history is sadly not unique but is a clear example of how two families rebuilt their lives after suffering such trauma and whose members went on to make significant contributions to both Jewish and British history, including the establishment of the Wiener Holocaust Library.

British Jews have played key roles and made major contributions over centuries in the fields of business, science, the arts and politics. In business, perhaps the most-loved retail brand we have in this country is Marks & Spencer, established by Michael Marks and Thomas Spencer. The largest supermarket in this country is Tesco, founded by Jack Cohen in 1919. Other businesses of note are the cinema chain Odeon, Moss Bros. and GlaxoSmithKline, all of which were started by Jewish Brits and have provided so many jobs and so much prosperity for this country.

In science, Rosalind Franklin was responsible for the discovery of the structure of DNA. Sir Ernst Chain was the co-developer of penicillin. Lord Robert Winston, now in the other place, pioneered fertility treatment that is responsible for goodness knows how many children born in this country and across the world.

In the arts, Michael Balcon co-founded Ealing Studios, which is one of the most important British studios to this day. The Ealing comedies came from that studio and started the careers of Sir Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers. Samuel Wanamaker rebuilt the Globe theatre just down the river from us, which was perhaps one of the most important cultural contributions of the 20th century. Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” was probably played there, which is another example of witnessing historical incidents of antisemitism. Monty Norman wrote the James Bond theme, which was then rearranged by John Barry.

Actors of stage and screen are absolutely part of our establishment. One of my personal favourites is Dame Maureen Lipman, an outstanding actor but also a campaigner on ensuring that antisemitism is understood. One British Jewish male responsible for bringing us all together every couple of years to sing and hopefully to bring football home is David Baddiel. Obviously, the English Lionesses have brought football home; we are still waiting for the boys to do it, but I am sure they will eventually.

Turning to politics, the first Jewish MP was Lionel de Rothschild, representing part of my seat—the City of London. Lionel first took his seat in 1847, but it was not until the Jews Relief Act 1858 that he was recognised as a Jewish MP. The first Jewish peer was his son Nathaniel.

Westminster City Council, where I was proud to be a councillor for 16 years, has been well served by Jewish councillors, both Labour and Conservative, over the decades, including council leaders Dame Shirley Porter, Melvyn Caplan and latterly Sir Simon Milton, who was a major political influence on me as leader of Westminster City Council and later Boris Johnson’s right-hand man at City Hall when he was Mayor of London.

A British Jew who is probably responsible for the start of my political career is my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), whom I met in our first week at the University of Exeter. In the first conversation we ever had, he told me I was a Conservative and I had to join the Conservative party—and the rest is history.

In my constituency, we have evidence of a Jewish presence since Roman Britain. In Threadneedle Street, the Bank of England stands on the site of the London home of Aaron of Lincoln, a Jewish banker who died in 1186. Those familiar with the city of London will have come across the street called Old Jewry, and the name is hardly a coincidence, because the Great Synagogue of London was based there until it closed in 1272, a few short years before the Jews of England were formally expelled in 1290 by Edward I. It was only in 1656, during the protectorate of Oliver Cromwell, that Jews were invited to return.

While Jewish communities would subsequently flourish all over England and further afield in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, I am proud that my constituency was once again the heart of the Jewish renaissance in this country. It is home to Bevis Marks Synagogue, which was built in 1781 and is the oldest synagogue in continuous use in Europe today. The first Jewish Lord Mayor was Sir David Salomons in 1855.

Tens of thousands of Jewish soldiers fought bravely in both the first and second world wars. Five Jewish soldiers have received the Victoria Cross and even now, every year the Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women hold a Remembrance Day parade at the Cenotaph on the Sunday after the official Remembrance Day.

Having researched this topic, I could speak for hours on the contributions made by individual Jewish people but I want to pinpoint one person who I think has made the most significant contribution in this country over decades: Dame Esther Rantzen. She started so many incredible campaigns and has made a huge impact on my life, starting with her “That’s Life!” programme, where in the early ’80s she highlighted the Ben Hardwick campaign, encouraging more people to consider organ donation. I carry an organ donor card because of that campaign. Her seatbelt campaign saw the law changed to make sure that children would be wearing seatbelts in the back of cars; I note that the Father of the House is in his place, and I know he played a significant part in that campaign.

Perhaps the most significant campaign that Dame Esther has been involved in since is Childline, lifting the lid off the heinous crime of child abuse and giving child victims a voice. The work that she has done on Childline, which is now run by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, has changed the way we deal with child social services as well and made a significant difference to many children’s lives. She has since moved on to the Silver Line, outlining the loneliness that so many older people suffer, and is trying to help to change their lives. The new film “One Life” tells the story of the Kindertransport, set up by Nicholas Winton, and one scene in the film shows “That’s Life!”, where all the survivors stand up and thank him. One of those survivors was one Susie Lind, the grandmother of one of my closest friends, Daniel Astaire.

Dame Esther is now sadly at the end of her life, but she has not stopped campaigning, and with her assisted dying campaign she is trying to make sure we all have a good death. I pay tribute to her and thank her on behalf of the whole nation for her outstanding contribution over the past 50 years.

It is perhaps no coincidence that today is Rosh—I am going to get this wrong—[Hon. Members: “Chodesh.”] Rosh Chodesh, the new lunar month. It is an important day of renewal in the Jewish faith and the Jewish month of Shevat begins today. One of the great verses from the 15th day of Shevat, spoken by Moses, goes as follows:

“Remember the days of old, consider the years of ages past; ask your parent who will inform you, your elders who will tell you.”

It is therefore fitting to debate the merits of a British Jewish history month.

We rightly already celebrate the achievements of many minorities in this country, and continue to educate future generations, through Black History Month, LGBT History Month, Pride and Islamophobia Awareness Month. The United States established Jewish American Heritage Month nearly two decades ago, and I believe it is now time we reminded ourselves of the remarkable contribution that the Jewish community has made to our nation, often after suffering the greatest hardships, and to celebrate the value of difference. It is time we used the achievements of the British Jewish community to remind ourselves of the values we all share and remind ourselves that this small minority is British. I hope the Government will take that on board and consider introducing a British Jewish history month.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

We will start with a time limit of six minutes but that will rapidly decrease to five minutes. Anyone who wants to complain can ask their colleagues to leave, because that is the only way they will get any more time. I call Fabian Hamilton.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nickie Aiken]

I thank everybody across the Chamber for taking part in what I think is a timely and important debate. I thank the Board of Deputies of British Jews, who have been very helpful to me and my team on the research for my speech. I also thank the Jewish Chronicle for providing me with my first-ever front-page lead story this week, and the Jewish News, which has a triple-page spread on the merits of a British Jewish history month. I hope that they will continue to support our campaign to bring this important month to fruition.

[Andrew Percy]

As we have a little bit of time, and as my hon. Friend has started thanking everybody, may I also place on record my thanks to the Hull History Centre, which has incredible resources available on the history of the Jewish community in Hull and helped me prepare some of my words for the debate?

[Nickie Aiken]

It was a pleasure to allow that intervention.

It is absolutely right that we continue to educate ourselves and future generations on antisemitism and the holocaust, and we will be marking the holocaust later this month, but it is equally important—or perhaps more important—that we highlight and celebrate the achievements and contributions of the Jewish community. The Jewish story in Britain is a positive and a negative one. It is a history of human suffering, of human perseverance and of human strength. Now more than ever, it is important that British Jews know that their incredible contribution to this country is valued and that the history of antisemitism is understood.

I take this opportunity to thank the very special rabbi in my constituency, Rabbi Daniel Epstein of Western Marble Arch Synagogue; I am sure he is not impressed by my Hebrew in this debate, but he provided me with the text from the Torah that I repeated in my speech. The Jewish community in the Cities of London and Westminster and across the nation is very important to me and has been very supportive of me, and has led me to believe that it is now more important than ever that we have a British Jewish history month.

I look forward to working with this Government, who I believe are very positive towards the suggestion, and with Jewish community to make the proposal a reality. We must celebrate the British Jewish community and we must have a British Jewish history month.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I have been an MP for 31 years, and it was not until one of my researchers asked for time off because there was a Jewish holiday, and then the other one asked for time off for the Jewish holiday, and then the third one came to ask, that I appreciated that all my members of staff were Jewish. I am incredibly grateful for the contribution that they have made to my office personally. Yet again, this debate demonstrates how good the House is when it comes together.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House calls for the creation of a British Jewish History Month.

Antisemitic Offences

Nickie Aiken Excerpts

Tuesday 9th January 2024 Westminster Hall

[Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East (Nicola Richards) for securing this important and very timely debate.

According to the Metropolitan police, in my constituency of the Cities of London and Westminster, we have sadly seen an unprecedented 1,350% increase in the number of antisemitic incidents since the awful scenes on 7 October in Israel. I received an email from a Jewish constituent who is in her late 70s, I believe, and was born and bred in the United Kingdom. She says:

“Some of my non-Jewish friends ask me if I feel safe now. The answer is generally yes, but I would not want to wear my necklace with its star of David when it can be seen. I would not feel safe walking past the pro-Palestinian protests if they knew I was Jewish. I love this country. I cannot think of living anywhere else. I have never been to Israel, but Palestine supporters, when I spoke to them in the street a couple of years ago, said I had no business being here, and a neighbour told me I should not be living in Belgravia; I should go to Golders Green or Stamford Hill.”

Over recent months, my constituency has been the location of protests in solidarity with Palestinians. I support peaceful protest, and always will. It is important to recognise that the vast majority of people taking part in these protests do so peacefully, but I fear that a minority are using them for antisemitic purposes. I am glad to see that these protests no longer tend to end at the Cenotaph, and that the protest organisers have been more sensitive about moving start times and locations to reduce clashes with Shabbat services in nearby synagogues in my constituency. I really hope that that will continue.

As I said, the majority of those on the protests are peaceful, and that has been the case across the country, but we have seen too many incidents of antisemitism on these marches. The police were slow to react initially, but they have got better, and hundreds of people have rightly now been arrested. We cannot live in a country where we shrug our shoulders when somebody is antisemitic. We would not do it if someone was being racist towards a black person or somebody of Muslim heritage; equally, we must not allow it to happen to the Jewish community.

The incidents are wide-ranging, and include the use of intimidating language, physical abuse and criminal damage to property. They have all been reported. One of the biggest issues raised with me as the local MP is abuse on university campuses—places where students should feel free to express themselves and their identity without threat of intimidation.

[Christine Jardine]

The hon. Lady is making a very salient point. I was frightened by a recent conversation with a University of Glasgow student who went to a meeting about the war in Gaza. He thought it would be a wide-ranging discussion, but he suddenly found himself at the centre of a meeting that was very antisemitic. He did not feel comfortable; he felt under threat. Does the hon. Lady agree that part of the problem is that the public are not aware of this? They do not see it, and the media is not expressing the danger of growing antisemitism in this country in the way that we would like.

[Nickie Aiken]

I absolutely agree. One of the most important books I have read over the past couple of years is David Baddiel’s “Jews Don’t Count”. I have always been a supporter of the Jewish community— I have spoken about going to a kibbutz when I was 18, and I have been to Israel several times—but I had never really thought about the cultural antisemitism in this country. None of us really thinks it is racism—well, many of us do, but it is seen as, “Oh, they are Jewish; it’s fine.” As I said earlier, if the target was a black person or anybody of colour, it would be considered completely differently. Those involved in that type of “humour” would be cancelled, and might even be prosecuted for hate crimes.

According to the Union of Jewish Students, there has been a staggering 500% increase in antisemitism on university campuses. I heard about that at first hand soon after the 7 October attacks, when a group of Jewish students from my constituency, from King’s College London, the London School of Economics, the University of Westminster and Imperial College London, came to visit me. One young man of Jewish heritage, British born and bred—from north London—experienced his first antisemitism on the tube coming to visit me. That was shocking for both of us. Those students, who are part of the UJS, have been doing absolutely fantastic work to support Jewish students over the past few months and before that. They informed me that they have received more than 400 calls to their hotline reporting antisemitic abuse over the past few months. The UJS not only supports students but provides training to thousands of people on campus to help them spot antisemitism and root it out before it can harm students. As has been said, one of the big points is understanding that antisemitism is racism, and that we need to call it out.

After I met the UJS, I wrote to all the vice-chancellors and their equivalents at King’s College London, the University of Westminster, Imperial College London and the London School of Economics and Political Science. I highlighted that, although of course it is critical to protect freedom of speech, there is a fine line between speaking freely and causing harm to groups of people and minorities. I reiterated in my letters that we must have a zero-tolerance approach to antisemitism and Islamophobia on campus. I also asked the vice-chancellors to inform me whether they were providing additional support to Jewish staff and students after the 7 October attacks. I was encouraged by their responses, which were far more rigorous in their condemnation of antisemitism than some US college presidents have recently been.

Initiatives such as the LSE’s “Report It, Stop It” allow students to safely and anonymously report abusive or threatening behaviour. However, that sort of mechanism is effective only if the reported abuse is met with swift repercussions for the offenders, which I hope the vice chancellors of the universities will continue to provide. University campuses are rightly hotbeds of debate, sometimes on contentious topics and views, but as I say, there is a fine line between the protection of freedom of speech and the protection of people’s rights. People need to feel safe and welcome on their campus, at lectures and elsewhere.

It is not only Jewish students who feel intimidated. Unfortunately, Jewish primary school children are being targeted as well. Some feel so uncomfortable that they cannot show their true identity when on school trips. This struck me so clearly in November last year, when a group of Jewish primary school children visited me. They were from the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer). He could not make their meeting, so he asked me to meet them. They were boys, about 10 years old. The first thing I noticed when I met them was that they were all wearing baseball caps. I asked their teacher why, and it was to hide their kippahs. British children in the House of Commons were hiding their identity for their own safety. How have we come to that? That has to stop.

I have heard from rabbis across my constituency. I am blessed to have so many synagogues in the Cities of London and Westminster, but I have been told how fearful and scared their communities are. We must do all that we can to protect them. I am pleased that the Metropolitan police in Westminster borough have taken that very seriously. They have increased the number of patrols around synagogues, and now liaise with rabbis. I thank the Westminster borough command and the neighbourhood teams for their work.

I hope that through today’s debate, and the continuing hard work of organisations such as the Union of Jewish Students, the Antisemitism Policy Trust, the Community Security Trust and the Board of Deputies of British Jews, we can continue to support those impacted, and slowly and surely rip out any form of antisemitism in this country. We should celebrate and thank the Jewish community for the amazing contribution that they have made, and continue to make, in our country.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill

Nickie Aiken Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 11th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

Leaseholders at 8 Artillery Row pay on average £2,000 in service charges each month. The managing agent, Avon Ground Rents Ltd, refuses to disclose what is included in those charges and to provide invoices. One of the charges was £30,000 for legal and professional fees, requested without explanation or detail, even though leaseholders asked—reasonably—for information for over two years.

Leaseholders in Neville House in Westminster are living in a cladding nightmare. Although Westminster City Council issued a hazard awareness notice on the building, no remedial works have been undertaken because the managing agent, Estates & Management Ltd, has failed to agree with the developers, Berkeley Homes, on the terms of a survey licence. As a result, the homes are unsellable.

The leaseholders of Blake Tower on the Barbican estate are living in a building with ongoing fire safety issues. The developer, Redrow, committed to dealing with those issues but has yet to undertake the necessary inspections. The tower also has building defects so serious that they have resulted in several flats being unliveable. The local authority, the City of London Corporation, shares my concerns and those of my constituents, and I understand that it is about to take action.

Those are just a few examples of the appalling behaviour of freeholders in my constituency. I have been contacted by countless leaseholders who routinely report appalling practices related to service charges, the cost of major works and the extortionate charges they face when renewing their leases. When they request information or explanation, they often face a wall of silence from freeholders and their agents. “Extortionate” is probably the correct word, as what some freeholders and their accomplices—including managing agents, lawyers and accountants—are involved in is often little better than extortion. Those freeholders should instead be described as freeloaders.

The Bill responds to the concerns raised by so many of my constituents. For example, clause 27 aims to make service charges more transparent, ending the practice of demanding unexplained service charges that too many freeholders engage in, often just to profit off leaseholders. The introduction of a standardised form for freeholders requesting service charges from their leaseholders is certainly welcome, but I would like more detail about what information will need to be disclosed and how much warning freeholders will have to give leaseholders regarding costs.

Too many of my leaseholder constituents have told me that they choose not to take their landlords to tribunal, as they could be liable for their huge legal fees even if they win. I therefore welcome clause 34, which responds to that concern by ensuring that leaseholders will no longer be liable for those costs. I also welcome the fact that the Bill overhauls previous legislation by increasing the standard lease extension term for houses and flats to 990 years, as well as reducing ground rent to a peppercorn upon payment of a premium. That will ensure that leaseholders can enjoy secure, ground-rent-free ownership of their own property without the hassle and expense of repeated lease extensions.

Another game changer in the Bill is the commitment to removing marriage value. For far too long, when leaseholders want to extend their leases, they have been at the mercy of their freeholder and that freeholder’s agents, and have faced some questionable practices. The Bill makes it cheaper and easier for leaseholders to extend their lease or buy their freehold. It removes the requirement to pay marriage value, capping the treatment of ground rents at 0.1% of the freehold value in the calculation and prescribing rates for that calculation.

Clause 22 will increase the non-residential limit of a block from 25% to 50% when it comes to securing the right to manage and enfranchisement, meaning that more blocks that are a mix of residential and commercial property will have the right to manage and buy their freehold. However, that still requires 50% of the leaseholders in a block to agree to go ahead with the right to manage, which could prove near impossible for many of my constituents, due to the unique nature of the Cities of London and Westminster. Over 1,300 properties in the City of London, and a staggering 12,100 in Westminster, have owners who live abroad or are owned by companies using central London’s golden postcodes as a place to park their cash. As such, while my constituents and I warmly welcome the Government’s intention to support leaseholders who want to manage their blocks, it will prove difficult in my constituency to achieve the 50% of signatories required.

If the proposed legislation is to achieve what the Government hope for constituencies such as mine, I ask them to consider making the thresholds more flexible—perhaps by stating that 50% of signatories should be leaseholders of apartments that are their main home, rather than an investment, or reducing the threshold for the right to manage to 35% of leaseholders. I would welcome further discussions with the Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley), on that point. I thank him for meeting me and my leasehold reform working group, made up of constituents who are dealing with some of the most egregious freeholders in my constituency. The 50% threshold was discussed in some detail with the Minister at that meeting.

Another area of huge concern for leaseholders is the cost of major works and estate management charges. I have lost count of the number of constituents who have contacted me for help regarding those issues: for example, leaseholders living on the Golden Lane estate in the City are being asked to pay tens of thousands of pounds extra because the freeholder, the City of London Corporation, is 20 years behind schedule. In Russell House and Churchill Gardens, which are both in Pimlico, residents are failing to secure details on timings and costs from Westminster City Council.

Time and again, I receive complaints from constituents living in private and social blocks that, while they appreciate that they have to pay for major works and repairs, they want the freeholder—whether it is a private company or a local authority—to be open and transparent about costs. I therefore welcome clause 40 of the Bill, which will provide more transparency about major work costs. Similar to service charge expenses, landlords will have to fill out a standardised form to demonstrate exactly how the leaseholders’ money will be spent and ensure that the works are carried out to a certain standard.

I take this opportunity to thank Harry Scoffin, the founder of Free Leaseholders, for his incredible work. His support and technical knowledge has been invaluable to me and my constituents when considering the Bill. I welcome the Bill, and look forward to working with the Minister and my constituents to ensure that we end the many questionable practices of some freeholders and ensure that the leasehold and freehold system in this country is open, transparent and fair.

Renters (Reform) Bill (Eighth sitting)

Nickie Aiken Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 23rd November 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

I rise to speak to amendment 159 and others tabled in my name and the names of my hon. Friends. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown for tabling the six amendments that he moved and spoke to this morning. They raise a number of important issues and it is right that the Committee and the Government carefully consider them.

As we have heard, clauses 5 and 6 set out the process for rent increases under the new tenancy system and how any such increase can be challenged by tenants. Under the existing assured tenancy regime, a landlord can only increase the rent during a fixed-term assured shorthold tenancy by including a rent review clause in the tenancy agreement. Rent review clauses of this kind are used by landlords to increase rent levels during fixed-term tenancies, but it is far more common for landlords to offer a new fixed-term tenancy at a higher rent when the old one is coming to an end, or to seek to increase the amount of rent payable once a tenant has fallen into a periodic tenancy with no specific end date.

The rents on periodic assured shorthold tenancies can be increased by the landlord serving notice under section 13 of the Housing Act 1988. However, although formal section 13 increases can take place only once a year, under the current system assured shorthold tenants can still be asked by their landlords either to agree informally or to formally sign a new agreement accepting a higher rent level, and there is no limit whatsoever on how high rents can rise by either method.

In theory, the tenant does not have to agree to a rent increase proposed informally or formally via a new agreement, and they can refer increases to a first-tier tribunal on grounds of reasonableness, yet all the available evidence suggests that only an incredibly small proportion of privately renting households do so. An analysis by Generation Rent of market rent assessments undertaken by the first-tier tribunal indicated that only 341 such cases were heard between January 2019 and August 2021. Bearing in mind that there are approximately 4.4 million privately renting households in England alone, it is a miniscule proportion.

The reason why so few tenants determine to make use of the tribunal process under the existing tenancy regime is obvious. If a tenant refuses a rent increase either informally or formally via a new agreement, or successfully challenges a rent increase at tribunal, a landlord can take immediate steps to end their tenancy, most obviously by issuing a no-fault section 21 notice.

With the introduction of the new tenancy system, the ability of landlords to compel tenants to accept rent rises by means of the latent threat of a section 21 notice will obviously be removed. Although there will remain the threat of spurious eviction by means of the remaining de facto no-fault grounds for possession that we discussed at length in previous debates, the new system will be an improvement on the current situation faced by private tenants when it comes to rent increases.

By amending section 13 of the 1988 Act, clause 5 will ensure that issuing a section 13 notice will henceforth be the only valid way that a private landlord—except those of a relevant low-cost tenancy, as specified in the Bill—can increase the rent, and landlords will therefore be able to increase the amount of rent charged only once per year. Supplemented by the provisions in subsection (4), which will increase the notice period for a rent rise from one month to two months, the changes will create more predictability and give tenants more certainty about future rent increases. On that basis, we welcome them.

However, we remain seriously concerned that the provisions in the clauses are not robust enough to prevent unaffordable rent increases from being used as default eviction notices for the purpose of retaliation against complaints, or simply because a landlord wants to try to secure a rent level that is far in excess of what they can reasonably expect from a sitting tenant.

We have consistently raised concerns about this issue since the White Paper was published in the summer of 2022. As I argued in response to a statement accompanying the release of the White Paper that was made by the then Under-Secretary of State at the Department, the hon. Member for Walsall North—he may remember—it is problematic that the Government did not include in the reform package any robust means of redress for tenants facing unreasonable rent rises. Our view remains as set out in that exchange last year—namely, that a one-year rent increase limit, the removal of rent review clauses, and vague assurances about giving tenants the confidence to challenge unjustified increases at tribunal are not enough.

With the scrapping of section 21, the risk of economic evictions by means of extortionate within-tenancy rent hikes will increase markedly. The Government acknowledge that tenants need protection against what they term “back-door eviction” by such means. However, we believe that the Bill as it stands does not protect tenants sufficiently from such economic evictions, and that it needs to be strengthened accordingly in several ways.

In the White Paper, the Government committed to preventing

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

We believe that that was an entirely sensible proposal. An obvious need under the new tenancy system is to ensure that all tenants are fully aware that they can submit an application to the first-tier tribunal to challenge a rent amount in the first six months of a tenancy or following the issuing of a section 13 notice. Equally as important is that the tribunal process operates in a way that gives them the confidence to do so.

The Bill allows for a situation in which tenants who are handed section 13 notices with what they consider to be completely unreasonable rent increases might apply to the tribunal to challenge the increase, only to see the rent level rise higher. That will act as a powerful deterrent to tenants making such applications. As a consequence, the Bill risks emboldening landlords to press for unaffordable rent increases in the knowledge that tribunal challenges will remain vanishingly rare, as they are now.

The Government’s explicit intent might well be to deter a proportion of tenants from challenging section 13 rent increases. After all, with 4.4 million households now renting privately in England, even a minor uptick in applications to the tribunal will place it under enormous pressure. Without additional resourcing and support, that could lead to extensive delays. Ultimately, however, it is for the Government to ensure that the first-tier tribunal can cope with the implications of the new tenancy regime that they are introducing, not for tenants to have to stomach unreasonable rent rises because there is a chance that they will not do so.

On a point of principle, we believe that the tribunal should only ever be able to increase the rent increase requested in the section 13 notice issued, or to award a rent amount lower than it. Amendment 160 would ensure that that would be the case by specifying that where a rent assessment is carried out by a tribunal, the rent subsequently determined by the tribunal cannot be higher than that originally requested by a landlord in the section 13 notice. We believe that that change, which would ensure that the tribunal process was in line with the commitments made by the Government in their White Paper, and reasonable and proportionate. I urge the Minister to accept it.

We also take the view that the Bill needs to include greater protection for tenants who would suffer undue hardship as a result of a section 13 rent increase. Once the provisions in the Bill are finally enacted, a considerable number of tenants—in particular those in hot rental markets where rent levels increase rapidly—will without doubt be unable to afford an increase in rent as set out in a section 13 notice. Many will simply give notice and leave the property without taking the matter any further.

A significant proportion of those who attempt by means of the tribunal a challenge of a rent increase perceived to be unreasonable, in an effort to secure a rent lower than proposed in the section 13 notice, but fail, will ultimately leave the property. That would even be the case if the Government accept amendment 160 and the tribunal cannot increase the amount further. We believe that those who would experience undue hardship as a result, such as tenants at risk of becoming homeless, because they have to leave what has become an unaffordable, should be afforded a little more time—it is only a little more time—to try to secure a property that they can afford.

Taken together, amendments 161 and 162 would achieve that aim by changing the point at which the rent increase becomes payable from the date at which the tribunal makes a determination to two months after that date. The effect of that pair of amendments would simply be to give vulnerable tenants a reasonable period of time in which to make new arrangements as a result of a rent rise that was unaffordable for them. We hope that the Government can see the merit of accepting the amendments and will give them serious consideration.

We also believe that three other important changes to the Bill are required in relation to rent. The first concerns section 13 notices. As I remarked earlier, the clause amends this section of the 1988 Act so that from the date of commencement it will be the only valid way in which a private landlord, except those of a relevant low-cost tenancy, can increase the rent, once per year. In practice, however, we know that, particularly at the lower end of the private rented market and in the unregulated shadow rental market, a great many landlords will inevitably increase rent levels without issuing a formal section 13 or 13A notice. Amendment 159 would ensure that in instances where they might, a tenant would have the right to seek to recover costs through a debt claim in the court. It would also provide the Government with the power by regulation to have such claims recoverable by tribunal, if Ministers felt that was a more appropriate body to determine such claims.

The second issue concerns rent requested in advance of a tenancy’s commencement. In the White Paper, the Government committed to introducing a power to prohibit the amount of rent that landlords can ask for in advance, and we supported that proposal. We will come to discuss measures aimed at discriminatory practices in relation to the granting of tenancies when we debate the various Government amendments that are to form new chapter 2A of part 1 of the Bill. However, irrespective of how effective those groups of amendments might ultimately be—we have our doubts, which we will set out in due course—blanket prohibitions are not a silver bullet for discriminatory practices in the private rented sector.

A number of informal barriers to renting privately are regularly faced by large numbers of tenants. They include requests that renters appoint a high-earning guarantor—an issue to which I hope we can return in a future sitting—and asking renters for multiple months of rent in advance. According to research carried out by Shelter, a staggering 59% of tenants reported being asked to pay rent in advance when attempting to secure a property the last time they moved; some were even asked to pay in excess of six months’ rent up front. Tenants reported taking out unsecured loans, using their credit cards or going significantly into their overdrafts to make the advance payments. One in 10 of those surveyed reported being denied a property for which they could afford the monthly rent simply because they were unable to pool together the sizeable advance rent payment that the landlord requested.

It is true that clause 1 defines a rental period as one month—a change from the current situation in which periods of a periodic tenancy can be of any length. One reading of the Bill might suggest that a single rental period is all that a landlord will be able to request under the new tenancy regime. If that is the case, I would be grateful if the Minister confirmed as much and detailed precisely how clause 1 would prevent landlords from requesting multiple rent payments in advance. Nothing that we can see in the Bill would prevent a landlord from requesting several rent payments at one time before a tenancy was signed.

We believe that the solution is new clause 62, which would ensure that the maximum amount that could be lawfully requested by a residential landlord in advance of a tenancy would be five weeks’ rent for tenancies of less than £50,000 per annum and six weeks’ rent for tenancies of over £50,000 per annum.

The third and final change that we believe is required relates to rental bidding wars—the product of soaring demand and inefficient supply which is, I admit, to a large extent concentrated in our cities and larger towns. The phenomenon involves multiple tenants competing fiercely for individual private lets. Landlords and the agents acting on their behalf, overwhelmed by applicants, now regularly play prospective renters off against each other, with some offering to pay months of rent up front as a lump sum, to sign longer tenancy agreements or to agree to rent levels far in excess of the advertised monthly rate.

Under the new tenancy system, long-term fixed-term tenancy agreements will not exist. We hope the Government will accept our new clause 62 or introduce an amendment of their own, as they promised in the White Paper, to prohibit landlords from asking for rent in advance. That leaves competitive bidding wars in respect of monthly rental periods as the only means by which this inherently inflationary phenomenon could continue—a phenomenon that the unscrupulous can undoubtedly use to discriminate against certain types of tenants and, even where no such discrimination occurs, pushes many to the limit of what they can afford financially.

Taken together, new clauses 58 and 59 would effectively prohibit bidding wars for private rented properties by requiring landlords or persons acting on their behalf to state the proposed rent, based on an estimate of the property’s market rate, in the advertisement for the premises. That should prevent landlords from inviting or encouraging bids that exceed the amount stated.

The new clauses are based on legislation introduced in New Zealand and Australia, the former having banned the practice entirely in February 2021 and the latter having seen it prohibited in most states—including, most recently, New South Wales in December last year and South Australia in June this year. We hope the Minister will give the new clauses due consideration. I look forward to his thoughts about them and about other five amendments in this group.

[Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

I thank the shadow Minister, who had some very reasonable thoughts about this issue, for his speech.

Currently, I am dealing with an example of what I believe to be the worst behaviour by a corporate landlord that I have ever come across in 18 years as a councillor or Member of Parliament. I am talking about rent increases. AXA Insurance, which now owns Dolphin Square in Pimlico in my constituency, is carrying out a major refurbishment of that estate; that is understandable. However, it is now asking tenants, some who have been there for many years, to move out of flats that it wants to refurbish and into others. But, if they do move out and into another flat, their tenancy breaks, and they have to take out a new tenancy, which includes a 40% increase in rent.

Renters (Reform) Bill (Fourth sitting)

Nickie Aiken Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 16th November 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Helen Morgan]

To clarify, I do not mean that they are deliberately unprofessional. I just mean that they may not be on top of all the legislative changes.

Linda Cobb: Yes. I think we need to change the way we communicate with landlords. We need to get information out there, because what we found through trying to drive up numbers in our accreditation scheme was that a landlord could be anywhere. Marketing was very difficult. Where do you go to advertise this information? It has to be very mainstream. Look at gas safety certificates: the campaign when they came in was very effective because it was a mass campaign. Safe Suffolk Renters is doing something very similar and we can learn from its work. Going back to what Sam was saying, we should learn from what has been good in the market at getting messages out there.

Roz Spencer: From a renter’s perspective, there is the obvious problem of renters’ knowledge about their rights. I think there are three reasons why renters’ understanding of their rights is poor: landlord and tenant law is so complicated; tenant rights are so slim; and the expectation of enforcement is at a low ebb. Renters have challenging lives and other things to think about. Their bandwidth to pay attention to something complicated, thin and unlikely to deliver for them is quite limited. If you get things right around renters reform, raising renters’ awareness of their rights will be much easier.

Linda Cobb: I am a big fan of going back into schools and doing work at that very early level. The majority will go into rented accommodation at some point, and we need to get into schools to show young people what a good tenancy is like and what their rights are from a very young age.

Samantha Stewart: That is a really good point. Let’s face it: renters are going to be renting for a long time, so getting them to understand things early, right from the start, is a fabulous opportunity.

Linda Cobb: Yes. They should understand what their responsibilities and rights are.

[Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

Q Sam, I was interested in what you were saying about maggots falling out of cracked ceilings. I was a councillor for a long time and a cabinet member responsible for public protection. That included environmental health. I was regularly shocked by how often tenants lived in such dreadful conditions until someone said, “You should report that to environmental health,” and then there would be a notice to improve. Surely there are protections now, but tenants do not know about the Environmental Protection Act 1990 or the Housing Act. This Bill will strengthen things like that, but what can we do to improve people’s knowledge of the fact that they can still go to environmental health to get their housing sorted?

Samantha Stewart: I think we just have covered some of the ways that we can do that. We just have to repeat the message consistently: there are fabulous organisations out there that advocate for and help tenants, and there are fabulous local authorities that can do the same. I can speak more from a vulnerable tenant perspective, because that is our focus. Even if they know where to go, they do not go, because they do not feel they have the power and they fear eviction if they tell anyone.

[Nickie Aiken]

Q Do you think that that will change under this?

Samantha Stewart: Not without a significant increase in safeguards around the new grounds for possession.

Linda Cobb: In the 2021 Chartered Institute of Environmental Health report, 56% of local authorities reported vacancies in their teams, so that phone call is going to go unanswered, and that email is going to go right to the bottom of the pile, even if they did complain. Then people will say, “My auntie complained to the council and nobody got back to her”—that sort of mentality—and they will not feel that they will be listened to. The report also said that 87% were relying on agency staff to fill that gap, and they are obviously expensive, so you can have only one of them as opposed to two full-time equivalents.

We are looking to stem that bleed with local authorities, and we are looking at ways to increase the training in the industry. We are losing very good local authority environmental health officers, because they are either retiring or leaving the sector because they are tired of it. We want more of the one-year private rented sector enforcement training courses, so we are working with our local university and training providers to get those up and running. We also want an apprenticeship-levied housing practitioner training course, which would help with these multidisciplinary teams. The team could then deal with all aspects—as well as physically going out, it could offer information about what the tenant can do themselves.

Samantha Stewart: I will just finish by saying that we also fund seven organisations across the UK that are working with tenants, particularly in the more vulnerable part of the sector, to help them strengthen and increase their voice. One of the reasons we are doing that—helping them to enact and effect these changes themselves, speak up for themselves and know their rights—across the UK with very different types of organisation is so that we can learn what works best and then use that evidence to inform policy.

[Ms Buck]

Q Can we go back to the issue of illegal evictions? Roz, you said that there is a lack of data in that area, which is absolutely right. Your organisation, probably more than almost any other, has a wealth of anecdotal information about what is happening. What can you tell us about the trends and characteristics? Is there any sense that some people pursue that route because of the problems in the court system? We have had quite a lot of discussion—other witnesses may have a view on this—about the proposed delay because of the problems in the court system, and some witnesses were very clear that there are no justifications for delay. What does your experience tell us about that, and what have you picked up about the reasons for such evictions?

Roz Spencer: Thank you for asking. You heard it here first: the safer renting count, which was first established in 19—sorry, 2021; I am showing my age—established a methodology that looked at five different sources of data that could be collected on an established, reliable basis, and did not involve any significant overlap between the data points, and we have just updated those figures from 2021 to 2022. The trend between those two years is an 18% increase in reported offending under the Protection from Eviction Act 1977—so, those are illegal evictions and cases of extreme harassment likely to give rise to the loss of a home. That 18% uptick is of significant concern. I have no evidence to suggest that the performance in courts has had any bearing on that, and I would be surprised if it had.

There is another figure that is interesting—I think it is buried in the Government’s H-CLIC data. All local authorities report on trends in Protection from Eviction Act offences leading to homelessness. That is a very big, stable and reliable time series for the data. Interestingly, during the pandemic, when there was a ban on section 21 and a subsequent inability to use bailiffs to enforce lawful evictions, there was a substantial drop in lawful evictions between 2020 and 2021. There was no such drop in the number of unlawful evictions. In fact, those numbers held up, sadly, at more or less the same level. As a proportion of evictions leading to homelessness, the figure came close to doubling.

The interesting suggestion buried in that statistic is that it is so important, when you are quite rightly considering replacing section 21 with new grounds for possession, that you avoid the unintended consequences of those changes in access to lawful eviction increasing the number of landlords who feel that they can get away with just doing it anyway.

I have another statistic to offer you. If you look at our count of what we think is a very conservative estimate of the number of unlawful evictions and the Ministry of Justice statistics for the number of convictions in a year, the figures show that in more than 99 out of 100 offences, the person who commits the offence, the landlord who undertakes the unlawful eviction, walks away scot-free, so it is little surprise that people do not regard the enforcement of the law as adequate.

Your clause 58 in the Bill is so important because it corrects one of the major defects in what is a 46-year-old piece of legislation, the Protection from Eviction Act, which does not do what it says on the tin. It has not been preventing evictions because nobody has a duty to enforce it. That is a very long answer to your question, but there is a lot of support for what I am saying in those data.

Renters (Reform) Bill (Third sitting)

Nickie Aiken Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 16th November 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

I think we are all talking about in-lease.

[Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

Q I just want to go back to your point about these party flats. What the Government are consulting on now, which Lloyd referred to, should address that, and also the other consultation on the current 90 days in London. Can you explain what you meant about what Westminster City Council is doing? It has always done the 90 days since the Deregulation Act 2015. That is not just Westminster City Council; it is the whole of London.

Helen Gordon: Yes, you are right; it is across London—some people do not. Westminster is particularly good at it, because of tourism. People come to London for the summer and purport to take a six-month property, and the reality is that they could give notice on day one that they are leaving in two months—it is a cheap form of Airbnb. So this is really to try to put down roots for longer-term communities.

[Nickie Aiken]

Q That is what the Government are doing under the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023.

Helen Gordon: But under the Bill, the ability to serve notice on day one will inadvertently allow short-term letting through the back door.

[Helen Morgan]

Q On Tuesday, we heard from a number of representatives of renters and landlord associations that a minimum term would be helpful in some circumstances, whether or not that is a two-year minimum term to try to provide the security and build the communities you have described. Do you think that that would be a good idea? How might it work in practice, in terms of some of the notice periods people might be able to give and allowing flexibility for people whose circumstances change?

Helen Gordon: The business practice on build to rent was quite often to give a one-year, three-year or five-year lease to offer that, with the CPI uplifts within it. Most landlords are happy to give a minimum of 12 months or two or three years. In our case, because we are a longer-term landlord and we know that we will not require the property back for us to live in it, we have offered longer leases. I suppose the in-perpetuity tenancy does away with that need, but linked to that is giving tenants certainty on where their rent would go. Within that, if we had for example put CPI—and we had a very high level of CPI at the end of 2022—our customers could still give two months’ notice; they can leave within that minimum term as well.

Renters (Reform) Bill (Second sitting)

Nickie Aiken Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 14th November 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

Q What are your views on the property portal that is being proposed?

Sue James: We think it is a great idea.

[Nickie Aiken]

Good.

Sue James: But it needs more.

Ben Twomey: I would add that it lacks detail at the moment, and we are very keen to see that detail. I mentioned that we are particularly interested in eviction notices and the outcomes of evictions being logged there; otherwise, there is not really much improvement in the way you monitor and enforce against abuse of some of the new no-fault grounds. So eviction notices are really important. Getting the rents charged on there will be really important, and we should think about energy performance certificates going on to the portal so that they can be enforced. When I talk about enforcement, I think it is really important that local authorities are empowered and have the necessary resources to enforce against bad practice—the kind of practice that can lead to people being unsafe in their homes.

It is also about having a place for tenants to access this information, as they have a vested interest in what happens afterwards. The only way to give them a vested interest is to have an incentive, and we think that is through rent repayment orders. We would encourage the portal to be made accessible to tenants. For example, where they can see that no-let periods have been abused, there should be a rent repayment order. If the landlord is not compliant with the portal, there should be a rent repayment order. Also, if the landlord is not compliant with minimum energy efficiency standards, we think that there should be a repayment—you would equalise it in that way. At the moment, where licensing schemes exist, for example, and the local authority pursues landlords for a fine, often that money does not actually get back to the person who has lost out—the tenant. It is important that rent repayment orders go directly to the tenant wherever possible.

Sue James: I totally agree, and I would like to pick up on the issue around the basic requirements of gas safety and stuff. At the moment, that is a huge protection in section 21; a landlord cannot get a possession order unless they have all those protections, and that does not appear in the Bill. We absolutely need to have them included, and the portal could be a place to put them. We would then have transparency; a tenant knows when they are looking in the portal that this is a good landlord and that they have complied with everything. I think that is so fundamental to changing the nature of the private-rented sector.

[Matthew Pennycook]

Q As we have you here and you have unique access to residents and organisations that represent residents, I wonder whether I could push you on some areas that are not covered in the Bill. Some of them were flagged in the White Paper and some were not, but they are a problem for renters every day—at least on the basis of my postbag—and we might deal with them in the Bill. I am thinking of things like guarantors, advanced rent and bidding wars, which we are hearing a lot about at the moment, particularly in the part of London that I represent. Could you speak about some of the potential solutions that we might look to work into the Bill?

Ben Twomey: The question of guarantors is really important. Usually, there would be a guarantor if you are not earning a certain amount to cover the rent—usually, you should have an income that is two and a half times the rent and, if not, you require a guarantor. For younger people, for people on low incomes, that can be quite difficult, so they would need a guarantor.

We have been working with the National Youth Advocacy Service to look at the barriers facing care leavers when they access private rented homes. This has been a major barrier for care leavers. At the moment, 60% of local authorities do not offer people the ability to be a guarantor for care leavers. Local authorities are the corporate parent for care leavers, so they are basically taking on parenting duties. We think that is a big problem. The 40% that offer the guarantor scheme in principle vary in the way that they do so. We think that it is for the Government to step in and say, “If, as a state, you are going to take on parental responsibility, you should be a guarantor to make sure that young people who are care-experienced are not being locked out of rented accommodation, compared with their peers.” That would be a major step forward.

To touch on bidding wars, we have found in our research at Generation Rent that there are seven times more bidding wars than there were just five years ago. We have gone up from 3% of tenants experiencing this to 21%, from our research. I experienced it when I moved down to London relatively recently. I was asked how much more I would want to give and how much longer I would want to stay in the property as a fixed-term tenancy. It is very, very common now. We think that the issue needs to be addressed. There is nothing in the Bill at the moment, but there should be some consideration given to this. When a landlord offers a price for rent, they are almost, by definition, offering a rent that they are comfortable with. Just because of the changes in market forces—that is a change not to their costs, but to the number of people queuing round the block for them—it should not be that they can then increase the rent as they please and encourage others to enter into these kinds of bidding wars, which basically pit tenant against tenant. The only one who is benefiting from this is the landlord.

Sue James: To pick up on that point, this is not in the Bill, but the position of the Renters’ Reform Coalition is that, at the moment, unless you restrict the amount that landlords can put up rents, you potentially have an economic eviction, and we would suggest that you restrict that to the lowest of either inflation or wage growth.

To touch on what is in the Bill, section 14 of the 1988 Act allows the tenant to apply for the tribunal to have a look at the rent. Originally, it was restricted to whatever the landlord was requesting, but in the Bill it is now the market rent. That would potentially have a chilling effect on tenants who want to challenge the rent that has been set. As an adviser, I might say, “It is limited to what your landlord has suggested,” but at the moment, with the way Bill is, that could be the market rent if the landlord has asked for less than that. Does that person then challenge it? That could have a chilling effect. When thinking about rents and, as Ben said, bidding wars, that absolutely needs to change, because it is really difficult. There are queues of people for every tenancy and the protection needs to be there, so thoughts around that would be really welcome.

Renters (Reform) Bill (First sitting)

Nickie Aiken Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 14th November 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

Q The abolition of no-fault eviction will mean that there are other grounds for possession. Can I ask whether you consider that the wording of the Bill is sufficient to ensure that the grounds that exist will not lead, in some instances, to de facto no-fault evictions? In particular, can you tell us your views of the exceptions in relation to antisocial behaviour? Are the measures robust enough to deal with such behaviour, as well as making sure that people are not evicted wrongly on those grounds?

Dame Clare Moriarty: I will leave the question of antisocial behaviour entirely to Polly, but on the question whether we think there is a risk that there could be no-fault evictions by another route: yes, we definitely do. There were two time limits in the original consultation, including one for the period before which grounds 1 and 1A would apply, for people reclaiming a house to move family into it or in order to sell it. There was an initial period of two years before that could be effected, which has been reduced to six months. The original consultation also included a period of 12 months after those grounds had been used before the property could be re-let. That has been reduced to three months.

Both of those are problematic for different reasons. First, even the most exemplary tenant could rely on only six months before they might be removed from their home on a no-fault ground. That does not deliver the security that the Bill is designed to give people. Secondly, if the grounds are invoked and people are moved out, saying that the property could be re-let three months later does not give the impression that this is being taken seriously. If the ground is only ever used for people to move family in to sell the house, there should be no question about the property being back on the market. There may be circumstances in which that happens, but three months is not enough for people to feel that this is a serious intent. I am not saying that this is something that people would be looking to get round, but if there is only a three-month empty period before they could re-let the property, that does not give confidence that this is a piece of legislation providing that security.

Polly Neate: I absolutely agree with all those points; I will not bother to repeat them. The antisocial point is really important. I absolutely understand why landlords are anxious about antisocial behaviour, but it is already covered by two different grounds for possession under section 8. Those will continue to be grounds for possession once section 21 is scrapped. Without the proposed changes, landlords would still be able to evict tenants engaging in antisocial behaviour—and they should be able to.

The big worry is the wording change from “likely to cause” nuisance to “capable of causing” nuisance or annoyance. That widens the definition of antisocial behaviour. There is a real worry—and I have seen this in several roles in my career—that domestic abuse, serious mental health issues and some forms of learning difficulties can easily be misinterpreted or targeted as being antisocial behaviour. There is a real risk with this change that people will be evicted unjustly, when what they really need is help and support; they are not antisocial tenants. That is the worry. We would say that there are already ample means to be able to evict for antisocial behaviour, and it is quite right that that should happen, but we really need to not risk widening that net and catching people in a wholly unjust and even dangerous way.

Darren Baxter: I have just a couple of points. On the ground that Clare mentioned—selling or moving back in—we need to recognise that this Bill is about improving security for renters. There is legal insecurity that comes from section 21; there is also a structural insecurity, which is that the sector is made up of lots of small-scale landlords churning in and churning out. That leads to people being kicked out because landlords sell. It is the most common reason why section 21 is used, and it is the most common reason why a no-fault eviction leads to homelessness, which has a huge impact on households and on councils’ finances, public spending and so on. We should be using this Bill to think about different forms of security, and the amendments that Clare mentioned would not only address the abuse of that ground, but give a more general security to tenants.

The other risk is no-fault evictions through the back door, through rent rises or so-called economic evictions: jacking up the rent to an unsustainable level, which then forces a tenant out so the landlord does not have to use the court process. We think you could amend that by having a limit on in-tenancy rent rises, capping at, say, the consumer prices index or wage growth—whichever is lower in any one year. That would stop landlords using that as a route for driving tenants out.

[Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

Q Building on what Mr Baxter was just saying and what Ms Neate said in her first comments, Shelter says that it has seen a huge rise in section 21 no-fault evictions over the past year or so. Is there a particular reason given by tenants for their evictions? Are you seeing a trend that is being used at this moment on section 21?

Polly Neate: May I start, as you specifically mentioned Shelter? What we are seeing is an overall increase in no-fault evictions, partly because of deteriorating standards within the private rented sector. We are seeing tenants who complain about the poor conditions in which they are living then being subject to a no-fault eviction. As standards are becoming worse in the sector, we are seeing that happening much more.

There is also an increase in no-fault evictions because the landlord wants to put the rent up. Again, that is partly because of the shortage of accommodation. It is partly because there is now such overwhelming demand that that is possible. We hear a lot in the news about how many hoops tenants are being required to go through, even including bidding wars for properties. If a landlord believes that there is an opportunity to make a lot more from a property, there is a temptation to get the current tenants out in order to be able to do that.

Those are two of the main trends that we are seeing. The point about standards is particularly important, because this goes to the root of the greater security that the Bill is intended to introduce. It is not only about no-fault evictions being used when tenants complain; there is an even bigger problem, which is that the threat of a no-fault eviction stops tenants complaining about poor standards in the first place. That increases the risk of poor standards within the sector. It stops people complaining. It means that more and more families are living in conditions that are potentially damaging to their health. Part of what this Bill is intended to do is improve the entire sector. The point about the relationship between no-fault evictions and poor standards is really central to that aim.

Dame Clare Moriarty: In terms of data, we are seeing larger numbers of section 21 evictions. It is a big increase, with 45% more people coming to us for help than at the same time last year. In terms of homelessness issues generally, we have seen a steep rise—a really consistent rise from early 2020, which amounts to about 25% year on year and 35% year on year for people in the private rented sector. It is worth recognising that there is a real increase in homelessness. There will be lots more data, which we will be happy to share with the Committee afterwards.

As for reasons why people are coming to us for section 21, I do not have detailed data at my fingertips. I will certainly ask whether there is more that we could analyse and share with you. I completely agree with Polly: we certainly see what are called retaliatory evictions. We are helping about 180 people a month who are being evicted after they have complained about conditions. We are certainly hearing from people the pattern that when the landlord presents a rent rise and people say, “We can’t afford that—a £500-a-month rent increase is just not absorbable,” they will then be threatened with section 21 eviction. As I say, I am happy to dig out more from our data to see exactly what is going on.

[The Chair]

If you can dig out that data and let the Committee have it formally, that will be very helpful.

Holocaust Memorial Bill

Nickie Aiken Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 28th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

The first holocaust survivor whom I met, as an 18-year-old working in a kibbutz in Israel, was Lena. She spoke as much English as I spoke Yiddish, but we got through it together. She was an amazing woman to work with and for. I will always be grateful for the support and friendship that she gave me, an 18-year-old away from home for the first time. For me, that was a lesson in human spirit and human survival.

We are fortunate in this country to have many holocaust survivors who are still willing to share their stories. Sadly, however, this living testimony will not be with us forever, and their stories show us why the memorial is so important. Critically, today’s debate is not about whether we should have a memorial—that, I think, is something on which we all agree—but about whether the right location is Victoria Tower Gardens, and, therefore, whether the Bill is necessary.

As we have heard, the Bill would amend the London County Council (Improvements) Act 1900, which preserves the park for the public, and repeal the prohibition on building in the park. That would permit the building of the holocaust memorial and learning centre. The centre is not just a simple monument; it would require excavations going down two storeys to fulfil a design that has come under heavy criticism on account of its scale and suitability for the area. Naturally, that has caused concern for many of my residents in the surrounding area and so, as the local MP for the proposed site, I stand in support of the Save Victoria Tower Gardens campaign.

The campaign is a group of local people who care deeply about this area. They have worked with a variety of groups, such as Historic England, the Thorney Island Society, the Buxton family, London Historic Parks and Gardens Trust and, most importantly, holocaust survivors, to make sure that we get the project right. After consulting those interest groups, the campaign has raised several concerns about the project, which come back to one major issue: location.

Location is a key consideration for every development, and it is no different in Westminster. There is a shortage of community parks in the City of Westminster, so the loss of even the smallest open space can have a big impact on the community. In central London, such losses are felt even more keenly.

[Christine Jardine]

I appreciate the concerns of the local community about their amenities, but in the suggested location, the holocaust memorial would offer more than just education and a reminder to the public. Does the hon. Lady agree that it would also offer a reminder to those of us in this place for generations to come about the danger of allowing a repeat and allowing racism—antisemitism—to grow? That is why the location, although I accept it is not ideal for everyone, is important.

[Nickie Aiken]

I agree that we must remember the holocaust—all holocausts, across the 20th and 21st centuries; sadly, they continue today—but this is about the location. As the local MP, and having been leader of Westminster City Council during the planning process—believe me, I saw it all, from start to finish—I know that the local people have no problem with the memorial; it is about the location. As I said, the concern is about the shortage of community parks in the City of Westminster. The park’s loss will be felt.

It is important to outline what an important neighbourhood park Victoria Tower Gardens is for thousands of local people, and not just those in expensive houses and neighbourhoods. Let us not forget that yards from this place and Victoria Tower Gardens, thousands of people live in housing association and council homes. They do not have the benefit of gardens. Every single green space is precious for them. I have spoken to people living on those estates and they fear that losing their local park will mean their children cannot play. Going for a walk or for lunch, or doing a media interview, is one thing, but losing a family park is another thing completely. There were more than 1,000 objections to the original planning application for the memorial, mostly on the grounds of loss of green space. I remember that time, and those were genuine concerns from local people.

The Save Victoria Tower Gardens campaign also noted the site’s important legal functions and its role in protecting the Palace of Westminster world heritage site. That is an important point. We must remember that Victoria Tower Gardens is a grade II listed public park. For this reason, the design of the monument and learning centre matters greatly. Historic England, the Government’s adviser on historic environment, has raised significant concerns about overwhelming the existing monuments. The gardens have notable existing memorials to oppression and emancipation: Rodin’s “Burghers of Calais,” the statue of the suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst and the Buxton memorial to the abolition of slavery.

There is a good argument, which I accept, that the presence of these monuments makes Victoria Tower Gardens an appropriate site for development. However, the proposed design of the holocaust memorial and learning centre is almost triple their size. The Save Victoria Tower Gardens campaign believes it will overwhelm the other monuments, perhaps making them fade away. The design was originally intended for a memorial in Ottawa, Canada, and it was imported here without much alteration and without taking into account the very different context.

The Save Victoria Tower Gardens campaign also has legitimate concerns that such extreme development will harm the park itself, and this has been clear from the very beginning of the project. The Secretary of State has left the Chamber, so I ask the Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Felicity Buchan), to consider looking again at the current design of the memorial and the location of the learning centre as the Bill progresses through Parliament. The design is far too large, and it will dominate this public park.

In response to the original public exhibition run by the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation, there was a clear concern that the excavation operations will cause significant harm to established trees and invite concern about flooding. During the planning process, I remember the Environment Agency making very clear its objection because of the flood risk to this place. The Environment Agency has since changed its mind, and I do not know why, but it was very clear at the time.

Equally important is that the scale of development will considerably change the feeling of the park. It is not just a statue or small monument; this is a large-scale development that will need two storeys to be excavated for the learning centre. By its very design, it will lead to an increase in the number of visitors, which will distort the functionality of Victoria Tower Gardens as a place of recreation.

Local people remain concerned that Victoria Tower Gardens will cease to be a neighbourhood park and will become a civic space, dominated by the holocaust memorial and learning centre and its associated infrastructure and security installations. In the meantime, the park will become a building site for many, many years, leading to a serious loss of amenity for local people and more congestion and noise pollution. Along with the restoration and renewal of the Palace of Westminster, residents will have the simultaneous repair of Victoria Tower, the replacement of the Parliamentary Education Centre and a memorial construction that will last for years.

[Stephen Crabb]

My hon. Friend is making an intelligent speech, and she speaks with authority as the local Member of Parliament. When she talks about the loss of the park, is she talking about the temporary disruption caused by the construction phase? My understanding is that the park will remain. It will still be there in perpetuity for local people, but there will be a modest reduction in its size as a result of the memorial being built. We are not talking about the permanent loss of the park, are we?

[Nickie Aiken]

My right hon. Friend and I will have to agree to disagree, because this will change the nature of the park. At the moment, it is a community neighbourhood park. It has a playground at one end and a massive open space where local people, particularly children, can play, run around and take their dogs for a walk. The size of the current design will mean that the memorial completely changes the atmosphere of the park.

[Mr Baron]

May I perhaps help my hon. Friend a little? The estimate by the London Historic Parks & Gardens Trust is that up to 30% of the park will be lost, so this is a major construction. In addition to the excellent point she is making, for some of us this comes down to the essential principle about a lack of consultation about the siting. The public were consulted and Westminster City Council said no, and the Government have decided to override it. That troubles us; as I have said before, it is not how we do things in this country. Perhaps that is the central point here.

[Nickie Aiken]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I was the leader of the council when the planning application was going through, and I remind the House that we were very surprised at the lack of consultation in many parts of the application. As I have said, there were 1,000 objections to the planning application within that process. The Father of the House was right when he outlined the issues between 2015 and 2016.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

It is also worth remembering that when the Government decided to call in the application and take this away from Westminster City Council, they indicated that they had been asked to do that by the council—that was never true.

Let me just make a comment on the intervention by my right hon. Friend the Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb). While the memorial and learning centre’s basement box and bronze fins are being constructed, up to two thirds of the park would be unusable for people. As for the estimate that the Government have put forward, whether directly or through their advisory body, the foundation—that only about 7% or 8% of the park would be taken—no one else believes that.

[Nickie Aiken]

I thank the Father of the House for his intervention. I reassure him that I am not aware of any local authority that wants to have decisions on planning applications taken away from it at any time, but particularly not where such a major application is going to really affect local people, because of the loss of amenity they are going to feel from the loss of this park. I agree that more consultation should have taken place, as this will change the make-up of this neighbourhood park. I am a Westminster resident, but many Members come here for the working week and go home. They may use Victoria Tower gardens for doing a media interview, going for a walk at lunchtime or meeting friends. However, I can tell them that the park is a vital amenity for many local people, particularly those living in social housing, who do not have the benefit of gardens in their homes. Taking away any amount of space from that public park will be a real shame.

I appreciate that this is a hugely complex and emotional issue. However, concerns about the Bill are not a nimby cause whereby the wish is to block all development. Rather, they are rooted in the reality that there is very little support among local people for this memorial being placed in Victoria Tower gardens. That is on the grounds of loss of green space, increased visitor numbers, environmental concerns, traffic and the effect on surrounding monuments. Rightly, there are strong policies in place about building on parks and public green spaces. It is obviously important to remember the horrors of the holocaust—of course it is—and to ensure that the next generation, the one after, the one after that and those that come after should never forget what happened in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, and subsequent genocides since then. But for many, especially those who live in crowded urban areas such as Westminster, our neighbourhood parks and gardens are vital to the quality of residents’ lives. That is why, for me, this is the right memorial but in the wrong location.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Felicity Buchan)]

It is a real pleasure to conclude the debate. I sincerely thank Members from across the House for their thoughtful, powerful and often very personal contributions to the debate. I was moved to hear such support for the principles of this Bill from all sides of the House. Together we can put our personal politics to one side and get the holocaust memorial built, while there are still holocaust survivors alive to see it.

Regrettably, it is a sombre truth that holocaust survivors who found solace in the United Kingdom are passing away, so we cannot let this opportunity pass us by. We must pass this Bill. We must ensure that future generations remember tomorrow. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, the Bill will enable us to keep that solemn promise. Through it, we are pursuing our manifesto commitment and a moral commitment.

It is encouraging to know that there is broad agreement about the need for a prominent national holocaust memorial and learning centre, even among those few dissenting voices who have expressed concerns about the site in Victoria Tower gardens. What is not in dispute is that its location at the heart of our democracy has an unmatchable historical, emotional and political significance.

I wish to spend a few moments replying to some of the concerns that have been mentioned, first, in the reasoned amendment, and, secondly, in some of the speeches. We are opposing the amendment. Many of these issues were examined in depth at the six-week public inquiry in 2020.

In his overall conclusion, the planning inspector was clear that the significant range of truly civic, educative, social and even moral public benefits that the proposals offer would demonstrably outweigh the identified harms that the proposals have been found to cause. A number of Members, including my hon. Friend and neighbour the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken), raised concerns about the park and the environment. I stress that our proposal is to take only 7.5% of the area of the gardens, with the structure of our learning centre placed underground.

[Nickie Aiken]

I appreciate what the Minister is saying about the 7.5%. However, does she agree that placing the memorial and the learning centre in Victoria Tower gardens will change the whole atmosphere of the area, which is currently a neighbourhood park to a civic area.

[Felicity Buchan]

It is our full intention that all activities that, at the moment, occur in the park can continue to do so, and we are being very sensitive in our design of the memorial and the learning centre. On the 7.5% point, I wish to note that the planning inspector, in his decision, recorded that the figure was agreed by all the main parties to the inquiry. I also want to say that the gardens will be enhanced in many ways with new planting, better drainage and more accessible seating. It is important also to note that the Holocaust Memorial Bill itself cannot and will not do anything to alter environmental and green space protections. The Bill will remove the statutory obstacle to building the memorial and learning centre in Victoria Tower gardens, it does not provide any sort of planning permission and other necessary consents. These are contingent on an entirely separate planning permission.

I wish to pick up on a few other points that were raised. On trees, I want to reassure everyone that all the mature London plane trees will be protected, and additional planting will increase the overall attractiveness. We are taking measures to minimise the risk of damage to tree roots. Flooding was also mentioned. A detailed flood-risk assessment prepared as part of the planning application has concluded that Victoria Tower gardens is heavily protected. However, we take the risk of flooding very seriously, The Environment Agency has sought planning conditions relating to the condition of the river wall, which we are happy to comply with.

The Buxton Memorial and the concerns about it being overshadowed were mentioned. I want to stress that the design of the memorial means that the Buxton Memorial will be kept in its current position and, with the addition of new landscaping and seating, its setting will be improved. The memorial will be no higher than the top of the Buxton Memorial and the fins will step down progressively.

Concerns were raised about the interaction with the restoration and renewal programme. I just want to stress that the memorial site is at the southern end of Victoria Tower gardens and need not prevent the use of the gardens as required by the R&R project for site offices.

There was mention of having the memorial at the Imperial War Museum. I reiterate that the Imperial War Museum is very supportive of our proposals and, indeed, the chair sits on the foundation board. There was also mention of the fact that the learning centre was too small, but it is of a comparable size to that of the exhibition space underground in Berlin. In the reasoned amendment there was mention of the fact that there should be an endowment fund for education, but nothing that we are doing precludes that. There was also mention of the fact that there is opposition from members of the Jewish community. As my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) said, we are never going to get unanimity among any group of people, but we are delighted that we have the support of the Chief Rabbi and of every living Prime Minister, and broad representation from the Jewish community.

Consultation has been mentioned, and the Secretary of State addressed many of those issues, but we have over the years carried out extensive consultation. We looked at around 50 possible sites in central London, and there was a public inquiry as part of the planning process. We conducted a very thorough search of possible alternative suitable sites. All sites were assessed against the same published criteria, which included visibility, accessibility, availability and affordability. Almost all the criteria in the 2015 site selection document can be met at Victoria Tower gardens. I thank Members across the House for their contributions in this important debate and for their support to deliver this long-overdue memorial.