Deregulation Bill

Philip Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Tom Brake]

It seems a long time since I was sitting opposite the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) debating the Deregulation Bill, but we are back here today. The Government support Lords amendments 1 to 37 and 39 to 123. I will also be speaking to amendments tabled by hon. Members to Lords amendments 19, 21, 26 and 27, which the Government will not be supporting for reasons that I will set out shortly.

Lords amendments 1 and 2 relate to health and safety and the self-employed. Lords amendment 1 addresses concerns raised during the public consultation on draft regulations conducted by the Health and Safety Executive during July and August 2014. Concerns were expressed that the regulations as drafted could lead to some self-employed persons who do pose a risk to the health and safety of others falling exempt from the law. Amendment 1 sets out the ways in which undertakings may be described in regulations made under section 3(2) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 to retain duties on self-employed persons. Subsection (2A)(a) provided for regulations to include descriptions of activities carried out by an undertaking where the duty on the self-employed would remain in place, essentially providing for a list of high-risk activities. Importantly, subsection (2A)(b) ensures that the regulations can also include a general description covering any undertaking the conduct of which may expose others to risks to their health and safety. The amendment means that the provision in the Bill aligns more with Professor Ragnar Löfstedt’s recommendation. The HSE will produce guidance targeted at self-employed persons and others to assist with their understanding of the amendment.

Lords amendment 2 takes into account a recommendation of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee to change the parliamentary procedure for these regulations from negative to affirmative. This will allow Parliament fully to scrutinise the regulations.

Lords amendment 3 removes a measure that would have had the effect of allowing private hire vehicles to be used for leisure purposes when they were not being used for private hire purposes. After listening to concerns about this proposal during the Bill’s passage, the Government have decided that the best course of action is for this measure to be considered as part of the package of measures recommended by the Law Commission to reform taxi and private hire vehicle licensing.

Lords amendments 5 to 17 seek to provide clarification and certainty in relation to the tenancy deposit protection legislation in response to recent court cases. The amendments address two issues. First, they make it clear that, where appropriate, a letting agent’s contact details, instead of the landlord’s, may be provided to a tenant. That was always the intention of the original framework, and thus the measure has been made to apply retrospectively. However, to ensure fairness, provision is also being made to prevent the reopening of out-of-court settlements or court cases that had been finally determined on this basis.

The second issue, which was raised by the recent Court of Appeal judgment in Charalambous v. Ng 2014, concerns tenancy deposits. The Court ruled that the tenancy deposit legislation should apply to landlords who received a tenancy deposit before the coming into force of the tenancy deposit legislation in 2007, and that they would therefore need to protect deposits if they wished to rely on the “no fault” ground for eviction, known as section 21. This was never the Government’s intention. Our amendments therefore make it absolutely clear that, although landlords affected by the judgment will need to protect deposits if they wish to rely on section 21, they will not be at risk of financial penalty should they fail to do so.

Lords amendments 18 to 26 protect tenants in the private rented sector from being evicted where they have raised a legitimate complaint about the condition of their home, and make the eviction process more straightforward in appropriate cases. They also ensure that tenants are aware of their rights and responsibilities and those of the landlord. The hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) has tabled amendments to these amendments, and I will come to those shortly. The effect of the Government’s amendments is that landlords in the private rented sector will not be able to evict a tenant merely because the tenant has asked them to carry out a repair, provided that the local authority has confirmed that such a repair is necessary to prevent a potential risk to the tenant’s health and safety. They ensure that tenants are always given at least two months’ notice before they have to move out of their home and make the eviction process more straightforward for landlords in situations where the tenant should be evicted.

The amendments enable the Secretary of State to make regulations specifying the information to be contained in any eviction notice served under section 21 of the Housing Act 1988, and provide that an eviction notice cannot be served where a landlord has failed to comply with their existing legal obligations relating to the condition of the property, the health and safety of their tenants, or the energy performance of the property. They also require landlords to provide information to their tenants about their rights and responsibilities.

As many Members will know, these amendments started as a private Member’s Bill in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather), whom I thank for all her work in bringing this to the attention of the House. I also thank the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills; the Minister for Employment; and the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Stephen Williams). Shelter and Citizens Advice have also been heavily involved in this process.

Retaliatory eviction is wrong, and its continued practice is unacceptable. No tenant should face eviction because they have made a legitimate complaint to the landlord about the condition of their home, and no decent landlord would engage in the practice. However, a small number of rogue and unscrupulous landlords think it is perfectly acceptable to evict a tenant for requesting a repair. These important amendments introduce protection for tenants against rogue and unscrupulous landlords, but they also contain provisions that will benefit landlords and make it more straightforward to evict tenants in legitimate circumstances.

On the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Shipley, I understand the intention behind some of them. However, I assure him that Lords amendments 18 to 26 ensure that all landlords are still entitled to their rights under section 8 of the Housing Act 1988, which enables them to evict a tenant who does not pay rent, goes to prison, or uses the house for illegal purposes. Our fundamental aim is to prevent a very small minority of rogue landlords from evicting tenants in retaliation for raising a legitimate complaint. Part of his proposals would undermine this effort.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

Will the Minister answer two questions? First, is the opposition to my amendments unanimous across the coalition, or is it just the Liberal Democrats who oppose them? Secondly, what estimate have the Government made of the number of revenge evictions that take place each year, because there is great discrepancy in the numbers?

[Tom Brake]

On the number of revenge evictions, I will have to get back to the hon. Gentleman; I may get inspiration in the next few minutes. On whether there was coalition agreement on this issue, when the Department for Communities and Local Government looked at the impact of his amendments, it was clear that, in some cases, they would allow a landlord to make a retaliatory eviction on the day after the landlord had completed a repair. That would go completely against the intent of the provisions in terms of protecting tenants. It would permit a landlord to evict a tenant as soon as repairs had been completed using a section 21 eviction notice. That is not in the spirit of preventing retaliatory evictions, but merely delays them until after repairs are completed.

On the number of revenge evictions, as the hon. Gentleman will probably know, the figure is estimated to be some 80,000 per year. The source of that figure was a YouGov survey of 4,500 renters.

[Philip Davies]

Rubbish!

[Tom Brake]

Even if the hon. Gentleman feels that the figure is rubbish and it is perhaps half that, 40,000 retaliatory evictions per year is still a very large number.

[Philip Davies]

Why are the Government basing their figures on an opinion poll commissioned by a campaigning charity on this issue and ignoring their own figures from the English housing survey, which estimates that the number is about 6,000 a year?

[Tom Brake]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that helpful intervention. He thinks that the figure is lower, at 6,000 evictions. I said 80,000, and then generously halved it for him to 40,000. If it is indeed 6,000, then that is 6,000 retaliatory evictions too many. His amendments would facilitate the process of retaliatory evictions, which the Government are, instead, seeking to avoid.

The amendments would extend the time within which a landlord must respond to a request for a repair from 14 days to 20 working days. This Government believe that renting out a property is a business and that tenants should be able to expect a much swifter response to a complaint than 20 working days—in other words, a month—particularly where the problem is serious. To clarify, this time frame is only for responding to the concern raised, not fixing the problem. There is a further amendment to the effect that any complaint must be within the scope of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985. However, that legislation is not the framework under which local authorities operate for the purposes of inspecting a property and deciding whether there is a health and safety risk to the tenant. Inspections are carried out under the Housing Act 2004 and involve checking for the presence of 29 potential hazards in the home.

Amendment 5 would remove protection against retaliatory eviction where a landlord intends to sell the property within six months. However, the proposed legislation already provides that it does not apply where, at the time when the section 21 eviction was served, the property was generally on the market for sale.

The next amendment would provide that protection against retaliatory eviction does not apply where a landlord wants to move into or redevelop the dwelling, or the dwelling is subject to a compulsory purchase order, or the landlord needs vacant possession to comply with a legal duty to carry out works in the building. Compulsory purchase orders are rarely used, but even where they are, the acquiring authority would become the landlord and could terminate the lease under separate powers.

The final amendment would introduce a five-year time limit on the life of the legislation or require that a review shall be commissioned within three years of the legislation coming into force. As the hon. Gentleman will be aware, it is standard practice to evaluate legislation after a certain period, and we will of course do this. However, we do not necessarily believe that the issue of retaliatory evictions will be resolved in five years, so we do not want to limit the powers as they stand.

Where a landlord wants to move back into a property that they are renting out, the legislation will not prevent them from doing so, provided that they follow the normal process and deal with any repairs before a local authority becomes involved. The legislation contains safeguards to ensure that a tenant cannot benefit from making spurious or unfounded complaints. A complaint in itself will not be enough to trigger protection against retaliatory eviction. In all cases, the local authority will have to confirm that a repair needs to be carried out and that failure to do so would probably involve a serious health and safety risk to the tenant. In addition, the legislation makes it clear that a tenant cannot claim protection against retaliatory eviction where they have failed to treat the property in a tenant-like manner—in other words, to take care of it, rather than to damage it wilfully and negligently—including by carrying out small jobs around the property.

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[Ms Buck]

I, too, rise to speak strongly in support of amendments (a) to (k) to Lords amendment 27, tabled by my hon. Friends on the Front Bench, and to reinforce the message we have just heard from the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field). I concur with every word.

I shall be relatively brief, because we have rehearsed these arguments on Report. I was also able to have a debate in Westminster Hall on exactly the same subject, and of course there were debates in the other place. However, let me reinforce a few points. The central point is that the spirit behind the amendments represents cross-party consensus in inner London. Obviously, we are now seeing cross-party consensus from the representatives of the London borough of Westminster, but the local authorities that have responded to the Government’s consultation include Haringey, Enfield, Camden, Westminster, Newham, Redbridge, Lambeth and the City of London, which all opposed the proposal. I know that hon. Members and peers with support from other local authorities have also spoken in favour of strong safeguards.

Those local authorities, their representatives and Members of Parliament from all parties feel a clear sense of the loss of protection for residential communities that this deregulation will involve. It is critical that a good Government should respond to the needs of localism and understand that central London in particular, like rural communities and the seaside towns, has distinctive needs and requirements that must be protected. We are arguing today that there are pockets in communities in central London in particular—and no doubt in other areas, such as the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford)—where the pressure from the commercial letting sector is becoming so intense that it is seriously impairing the quality of life of a number of residents.

As the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster has said, we are concerned about the loss of residential stock. Westminster city council has produced very strong evidence to support its argument. It has dealt with more than 7,000 enforcement cases so far and it is very important to stress that those are not enforcements against people letting out a room in their home for Wimbledon fortnight. If those were the types of enforcements taking place, the Minister would be able to point to evidence of an innocent homeowner being enforced and fined for a casual holiday letting, but the Minister is not able to do that because I do not think for a second that that is what local authorities are doing.

What we are seeing is the sustained movement of the commercial letting sector into residential communities. Westminster city council estimates that about 500 units of accommodation a year are lost to the housing supply. In fact, it has so far lost the equivalent of about seven years’ worth of its target housing supply at a time of acute housing shortage. It has also produced evidence that demonstrates that the kinds of rents that are being charged for properties ranging from rooms to whole houses are so much more than the going rate for a shorthold private tenancy, let alone that for a social letting, that it would not be sensible financially for a homeowner not to get into the sector. If we look at the websites advertising those short-term lets, we will see that variance for ourselves. Westminster city council last did a sustained piece of work on this issue a few years ago—I suspect that the outcome would be far starker today—and it found an average difference of 273% between short-term let rents and longer-term rentals.

The irony of Westminster city council making representations on the impact of market rents and the loss of affordable housing units is not entirely lost on me. None the less, I am happy to get together with it on the critical issue of the loss of residential housing stock, which must be addressed. The Minister has previously spoken in the same debates as me and professed concern about affordable housing and the housing supply in London. I do not understand why the Government are turning their face against the cross-party consensus that the hospitality industry is, in effect, leaching into the residential housing stock in London.

The hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster and I have also previously raised the issue of the impact on residents. I will not rehearse all the arguments, but last summer I conducted a survey of people’s perceptions of the impact of short lets on Maida Vale, Bayswater, Queensway, north Marylebone and parts of St John’s Wood, which are the front-line areas. There were a litany of concerns and complaints about the lack of security in residential blocks with a high level of short-term lets, the impossibility of knowing who is coming and going, and serious problems of management.

Short-term visitors tend, not necessarily through any fault of their own, to treat their accommodation like hotels, but hotels spend a lot of money on looking after their properties whereas that is not necessarily the case with short lets. There are reports of damage to security systems, much greater wear and tear on communal areas and a higher level of anti-social behaviour. That is not necessarily because the people are themselves anti-social, but they come to London to enjoy themselves and to party and have a good time, so there is more rubbish and noise nuisance.

That is having a negative impact on those neighbours who in some cases find themselves stranded in residential blocks that are now almost entirely turned over to short let; it is also a cost to the public purse. Local authorities have to spend a considerable amount of time and effort enforcing against antisocial behaviour and higher levels of rubbish and noise nuisance. One of the Westminster wards has had to spend its budget on additional enforcement officers at a time when the local authority has cut more than £500,000 from its children’s services budget—that happened only last week—and plans to, in effect, halve its youth service. I know what I would rather spend public money on. I do not want it spent on chasing the hospitality industry for nuisance in a residential block; I would rather spend it on protecting our children and youth services. The impact on residential communities is a real problem.

That is all happening: as I have said, there have been more than 7,000 enforcements. Local authorities are having to chase a moving target as it is. The Government’s relaxation of the rules will make that significantly worse. At the moment, the local authority simply has to prove, should it choose to do so, that the property is being let on a short-term let basis without permission. In future, it will have to demonstrate that the property has been let for more than 90 days without permission, which will be a far harder thing for it to do. We have already seen—Camden, I think, is the council that has monitored this most closely—an explosion of lettings on the main websites since the Government announced their intention to deregulate. That is no accident and we can expect it to happen elsewhere.

We need to make it possible for local authorities to act to enforce. Personally, I would like the length of time for which someone can let out their home to be reduced significantly to 30 days, which would be reasonable in London. I certainly support the argument that the property should be the principal residence of the person who is letting it. Above all, I strongly feel that local authorities should have a right to be notified when such lettings take place. It is only through notification that a local authority will be able to enforce action.

Fundamentally, this comes down to the right of a local authority to determine what is in the best interests of its own community. We do not need to worry about whether London local authorities are concerned with boosting the tourism industry or economic growth: they are very much concerned with them, but they know very well that a balance has to be struck between those agendas and the protection of the people who live in London and their amenity and access to housing. Westminster city council—which, I repeat, is not known for failing to advocate a deregulatory agenda—is at the forefront of making that case, with which I totally agree.

Even at this last hurdle, if the Government support the measures proposed by my colleagues on the Labour Front Bench to allow local authorities to have the right to determine what is in the interests of their own communities, that would be very strongly welcomed by all parties in local government and in this Chamber, and the many thousands of people who live in the residential neighbourhoods most affected in London would breathe an enormous sigh of relief.

[Philip Davies]

I begin by drawing the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. As I have previously made clear in these debates, I am a tenant in two properties: my home in Shipley and where I stay when I am working in Parliament. I am also the landlord of one other property that I rent out. I therefore like to think that I have a good perspective on these matters and I want to see a situation in which we reward good landlords and good tenants. That is the basis for my amendments to Lords amendment 18.

In the interests of time, Madam Deputy Speaker, and in order to be helpful, I intend to speak only to my amendments, because other Members have already ably put forward their cases on the others. From what I have heard, the shadow Minister might want to press one of his amendments to a Division, so I will not seek to divide the House on mine, in order to protect time for Members across the House and facilitate debate. I am being as helpful as you know I always am on these occasions, Madam Deputy Speaker.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Before you proceed, Mr Davies, let me say that that is extremely helpful and that I am very grateful. Given that the debate must end at 4.46 pm, it gives us a better idea of how to proceed. Thank you.

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is a shame that the debate clashes with the first day of the Cheltenham festival, but that is a hardship we shall have to bear. Anyone who has their doubles and trebles might like to know that Ruby Walsh and Willy Mullins have won three of the first four races today.