Renters (Reform) Bill

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 24th April 2024 Commons Chamber

On the one hand, I understand the concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall), but on the other hand I also understand the concerns of others, such as my hon. Friend the Member for Dover, who worries that it is too easy to evict people. It is not easy to get the balance right, but in putting forward this suite of carefully judged amendments, the Government have done that. The Bill will make it fairer and more secure for people in the private rented sector, but it also treats landlords fairly. I think that is a fair balance.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

While I respect the views of the hon. and learned Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), who raised some valid points about the county court system and the pressures on it, as someone representing a large number of private renters, I must nevertheless express my concerns and share those raised by the shadow Minister and others about the Government’s failure to deliver on their promise on no-fault evictions. I rise, as chair of the all-party parliamentary group for students, to comment specifically on the proposals in relation to students, to support new clause 41, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel), and to speak to amendment 260, which stands in my name.

Students form a substantial part of the private rented sector. Back in July, the all-party parliamentary group organised a meeting to ensure that their views were heard. We brought together people from different nations of the UK and from all parts of the country. The Minister—sadly, he is not currently in his place—would have found it useful, because it highlighted a number of issues in the Bill that have not been properly thought through. I have discussed with the Minister the issues that came out of our meeting, and I am grateful to him for having found that time, but I want to share some reflections at this point in the Bill’s progress.

First, on the decision to extend grounds for eviction from purpose-built student accommodation to houses in multiple occupation and potentially to other student renters, there are mixed views across the country. Some are worried that exempting students makes them more attractive to less scrupulous landlords as potentially second-class, less protected tenants. Others, though, were concerned that giving students the same protection as other renters would force landlords to leave the student market, with that point made by landlords in areas where there was significant pressure on the housing market. Overall, we reached the same view as the Select Committee: on balance, the exemption is probably right, but it needs to be kept under review.

There is, however, a wider problem with the whole approach to students in the Bill. It seems that the Government have approached students with a one-size-fits-all model: they are undergraduates aged 18 to 21, living away from the parental home from the first time, and living there during term time only. However, students at our meeting were at pains to point out that they are not a homogeneous group. There are mature students who are renting in their home city and need to be there all the time, and students with families. Many courses do not start in September and are not on the cycle on which the Government’s amendments are premised. There are postgraduate taught programmes on a different, longer cycle. There are postgraduate research students on full-time programmes over several years, who are like any young professional. There are mixed households of students and non-students, particularly where groups of friends form and perhaps one member graduates.

I discussed all those variations with the Minister— I am glad to see him back in the Chamber—and his view was that any atypical student would simply not be subject to the exemption, partly because these issues have not been thought through properly. That might be in their favour because they will have greater protection, or it might leave them out in the cold because landlords will find them less attractive within the student market. Again, that emphasises the need to keep the impact of the student proposals under close review.

As the Minister resumes his seat I will move to my amendment 260, which raises a further issue that he referred to: the cycle of student tenancies, which I have discussed with him and on which he was sympathetic. When some of us were students, undergraduates would start university in September, settle in and make friendship groups, and towards the end of the academic year, after Easter, they would start looking for accommodation for the subsequent year. We have seen a landlord-driven arms race, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West referred to it, in which they have pressured students ever earlier in the year to enter into contracts for the subsequent academic year.

It is now the norm in many parts of the country that students starting a course in September are put under pressure by landlords the following month to enter into a contract for the following year. That forces them to pay a substantial deposit at a point in their life when they already have significant additional costs. It also forces them into joint tenancies with groups of people who they might discover later in the year are probably not who they want to live with in the subsequent year. Appeals to landlords to step out of the contract into which they entered are invariably rejected.

As the Government’s proposals are to regulate on the basis of that tenancy cycle, my proposition is that we try to make that cycle work better by saying that designated student contracts should not start sooner than March of the year in which students will take occupation in September. That would be in the interests of tenants, for the reasons that all of us who represent students will know. Setting a defined starting point will also end the arms race, in the interests of landlords.

[Wera Hobhouse]

The tendency that the hon. Gentleman refers to is not new. My daughter, who graduated in 2011 and therefore started in 2008, was already under that pressure. He is right that for a lot of young people it is incredibly difficult to find a group of people they want to live with the following year within a month of arriving at university. His proposals are commendable and I hope the Government are listening.

[Paul Blomfield]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. It does vary in different parts of the country, but the way in which it has come earlier and earlier each year, to the ludicrous position where students are being forced into contracts for the subsequent year almost at the moment they start their first year, clearly needs to be addressed. As I said, I have discussed this issue with the Minister. When we talked about it he seemed sympathetic, so I hope it is an issue we can address as the Bill progresses.

[Wera Hobhouse]

Before I start my remarks, I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

My amendments—amendments 39 to 41—all refer to the Protection from Eviction Act 1977. I have raised this issue with the Government for the past two years, after one of my constituents, who is a lecturer in law at Bristol University, came to me with his concerns. To be fair to the Government, the Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the hon. Member for Kensington (Felicity Buchan), had a meeting with that group of academics, but then I heard nothing, which was a little bit disappointing. I have, just this afternoon, received a reply from the Minister. I thank him for that, but it was dated yesterday and only sent to me today. I will look at it very carefully, but it is still important that I raise here what I have to say.

There are two parts to amendment 39, which relates to the law on harassment of a residential occupier. At the moment, the law is complex and confusing, particularly for lay people, and difficult to enforce. I have glanced over the response from the Minister. The Government believe that there is currently enough power of enforcement. As I understand it, the 1977 Act is quite unknown. Local authorities and the police do not know enough about it. I wonder how we can work in that space to ensure that any unintended consequences brought in by the new legislation will not allow rogue landlords, or those who do not want to do the right thing, and refer them to other pieces of legislation.

First, the amendment would change the law so that everyone who is harassing a residential occupier to try to get them to move out of the property is subject to the same law. Currently, if a criminal landlord is harassing the tenant, the law is fairly clear. However, it might be another individual who is harassing the tenant to get them to move out. In this case, the local authority has to try to find out whether the person doing the harassing is an agent acting for the rogue landlord.

There is also often deliberate obscurity about the identity of the landlord. Investigating the relationship between individuals to establish their precise legal relationship is time consuming and unnecessary, where the aim of the legislation is to protect residential occupiers from harassment. The amendment changes the law to make enforcement easier for local authorities. The change will not affect the position of landlords. They will continue to be subject to the same law. It is only the local authority that can prosecute this offence, and it would still need to prove that a rogue landlord, their agent or any other person knew, or had reasonable cause to believe, that their actions would have the result of causing the occupier to leave.

The other thing that the amendment would do is clarify the law. Currently, if a rogue landlord interferes with services that are reasonably required for the occupation of the premises as a household, that can constitute harassment. However, it is not clearly stated what those services are—I can think of essential services, such as electricity, cutting the water off or even changing the locks—so it is important that we take that into consideration. We are not talking about decent landlords, as I have always made very clear. It is about getting to those landlords who are clearly not doing the right thing.

As I said, it is not clearly stated what the services are. Amendment 39 sets out a list of such services, including water, gas and electricity, as well as access to “electronic communications networks and services” as defined in section 32 of the Communications Act 2003.

Amendment 40 deals with three issues. First, the law on whether certain occupiers are protected by the legislation on illegal eviction is very complex, and it can be very difficult to establish. That is because some occupiers—for example, those who live with the landlord—are excluded from the protections in the law and can therefore be evicted without a notice or court order. That creates an incentive for sham arrangements whereby a rogue landlord might pretend to live with a tenant to circumvent the protections in the Protection from Eviction Act 1977. The amendment reverses the burden of proof, placing it on the landlord, who must establish that an occupier is not protected by the law. It is based on the idea that everyone has the basic protection of the law unless they are in an exclusionary category for a good reason. The presumption should be that they are protected.