Renters’ Rights Bill

Rebecca Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 14th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Florence Eshalomi]

As a fellow London MP, the right hon. Member will see what I see in my inbox, with many tenants facing that threat on an almost daily basis. They are the same tenants who come to our advice surgeries and are turned away from overstretched council departments, and who cannot apply to social housing waiting lists because those lists are already full. It is important that we get guarantees and protections for those tenants as outlined in the Bill, and hopefully help my constituents and his, and people up and down the country.

This situation cannot be allowed to continue. I am proud that the Bill will be strengthened by some of the welcome amendments that Members have tabled. I extend my support to new clause 3, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel), on limiting rent payable in advance. That is a big issue in my constituency of Vauxhall and Camberwell Green, and I have spoken to many tenants who are being asked to stump up six to 12 months’ rent in advance. That leaves many people priced out of the rental market, ending in a race to the bottom where landlords can charge more and more for less in return.

How can someone finally find a place that they want to call home, only to be told that they need to pay out thousands upon thousands of pounds up front? In some cases, because of the rents charged in my constituency, and many others, the money that people are asked to stump up in advance would amount to a deposit if they took it to purchase a home in another part of the country. We are talking in excess of £30,000 if someone is asked to stump up, with an average rent of £2,500 per calendar month in my constituency. The result is that those who do not have significant savings or family wealth end up needing to borrow money just to have somewhere to live. That cycle of exploitation is pushing thousands of people into debt, impacting them for the rest of their lives.

Research from StepChange shows that one in six private renters are relying on credit to make ends meet. Something must change, because the system is broken. We must lower immediate financial pressures on tenants and make private renting fairer for everyone. That is why I welcome the amendments tabled by the Secretary of State, and I urge the House to support measures that will reduce up-front costs for all renters.

My constituency is home to thousands of university students from great universities across London. Students often have the most insecure housing, because landlords know that they can charge a new group higher rents every year. I therefore welcome measures that restrict the time that a landlord can agree a new tenancy, prior to the end of the current tenancy in student housing. Many of us will remember the time when we went to university and looked for accommodation. We signed up to live with friends or someone we knew—perhaps by Christmas we had all fallen out, and there was that frantic search when someone left the property and we had to find a new flatmate. Many social media posts are put on SpareRoom.com or Facebook, and university students need time to bed into their new accommodation. The new clause will help to give students that breathing space, and avoid the problems they face as a result of early sign-up accommodation.

New clause 10 addresses a vital issue, and I pay tribute to my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), for tabling it and for her tireless campaigning. The death of a loved one is a difficult and challenging time for anybody, and the one thing people need is the time and space to grieve. Under current rules, guarantors can end up facing a huge bill for the remainder of their loved one’s rent. None of us would want to be placed in that situation. It is right that the Government have acted to prevent guarantors from being faced with that unacceptable scenario, and I urge the House to support the new clause.

I also wish briefly to touch on some other amendments, which I hope the Government will consider during the Bill’s passage in the other place. Although the Bill introduces a rent tribunal for unfair rent rises, there is concern from groups such as the Renters Reform Coalition that measures in the Bill do not go far enough to prevent landlords from evicting a tenant under the guise of a large rent increase. I am particularly concerned that market rent may not be an appropriate benchmark when market data is poor. Renters at the bottom end of the market could end up being told that an unaffordable rent rise is acceptable under this system. We need guarantees that the use of a tribunal will resolve that, and that it is available and accessible to tenants.

In Scotland, only a handful of rent increase cases a year go through the tribunal system to the rent officer, and it would severely undermine the Bill if tenants who were being exploited did not take up the option available to them. I would be grateful if the Minister could explain how the Government will encourage the take-up of such a provision, and whether he will support the alternative measures and safeguards in the Bill, such as amendment 9, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool Wavertree (Paula Barker).

Finally, a number of amendments have touched on the vital issue of home adaptations in the private rental sector. It is not fair that disabled tenants end up with reduced access to their own homes. The Government are rightly looking at making it easier for disabled people to thrive in the workplace, but what is the point of someone thriving if they do not even have an adequate home or housing?

We cannot expect someone to go out and work and contribute to the economy if they have not had a good night’s sleep. Can any of us imagine being unable to have a shower in our own flat because the landlord refuses to make the necessary adaptations, or trying to cook in a kitchen when we cannot even reach the worktops? None of us would want to live in such conditions, yet that is the reality for many disabled people in the private rented sector in 2025 in the UK. People face such issues on a daily basis, with more challenges and blockages when trying to get private landlords to address them.

I urge the Government to ensure that disabled people do not face a private rented sector that is far too often completely inaccessible to them. I look forward to the Government responding to the report by my Committee’s predecessor on disabled people in the housing sector. The House must continue to look at how we fight for a rental sector that works for everyone, regardless of their background.

[Rebecca Smith (South West Devon) (Con)]

I was privileged to serve on the Bill Committee, and it is good to see many fellow members of the Committee in the House this afternoon. Before I start, I wish to pay tribute to the many excellent landlords across our country. The Bill has been designed to tackle the worst offenders, but it is worth putting on the record that thousands upon thousands of landlords do a good job of providing long-term accommodation for many people in the private rented sector. On Second Reading and in Committee we spoke about the unintended consequences that exist in the Bill, some of which still remain—that was alluded to by my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds).

[Rebecca Paul (Reigate) (Con)]

My hon. Friend raises an important point about unintended consequences. Does she agree that it is important we consider our key workers, such as NHS staff and police, who rely on accommodation tied to their employment? With the abolition of assured shorthold tenancies, it is important to ensure that provisions are there to support such tenancies, so that they can continue and we can retain and attract much-needed police officers and NHS staff.

[Rebecca Smith]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, and that is a perfect example of one of the unintended consequences that I do not believe have been put in deliberately but are something that we might see as a result of the Bill. Other issues include accidental landlords—those who did not intend to be landlords and are not large portfolio holders—and small landlords, and we have already heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner about the challenge they face regarding economic drivers and the risk of the market shrinking. We talked a lot about that on Second Reading, but ultimately landlords are leaving the market, and if there are fewer homes for people to rent, we are in a worse situation.

I support new clause 20, which stands in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner. I believe a review of the Bill’s impact on the housing market after a year is important to ensure that we make it even better than it already is, and to address those unintended consequences. We can all agree that is important, given the challenges we have already heard about regarding the long housing waiting lists and the homelessness rife across our country. It is also important to listen to landlords.

In particular, I draw attention to some of the reasons why new clause 20 is so important. Plymouth Access to Housing, known as PATH, is a key player in tackling homelessness in my constituency, and it works especially with those who are harder to place into accommodation. It has rightly said that it supports the Bill in principle—as we have heard, the Opposition support large parts of it too—but in a buoyant private rental market. It is concerned that it is not buoyant, so there is already a challenge. That is why a review would be important. PATH also says that it has received funding in the past to support landlords to stay in the private rented sector. What plans does the Minister have, perhaps outside of this Bill, to ensure that such organisations, in which some Members present today have worked, might be able to mitigate the impact of some of those future challenges?

The South West Landlords Association, which I have mentioned, would benefit from new clause 20, because it would allow for an assessment of a provision that essentially amounts to a doubling of the amount of rent arrears that can be accrued and of the notice required for possession before a landlord can get somebody out of their property. Landlords are particularly concerned about that, for the financial reasons we have already set out. If they have to wait for three months of arrears and then another month’s notice before they can remove someone from their property when they have not been paying rent, that has a massive impact on small landlords, and on those accidental landlords in particular—that is nearly half a year of income they would lose. Ultimately, it is the luck of the draw. We do not know in advance how good tenants will be. If someone has an excellent tenant, it is not a problem, but with a bad tenant it is not so good.

[Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. Does she agree that, fundamentally, the only way to secure the rights of tenants is to ensure the buoyant rental market that she is talking about, where landlords want to enter and invest in it? They are then competing for tenants in the market, which is the biggest and most powerful force of all. That will drive decent behaviour towards tenants, and without that, landlords cannot gain and retain tenants.

[Rebecca Smith]

I appreciate the point that my right hon. Friend makes. I agree that the market is important, but I also appreciate that there are some whom the market has failed. We have to find a situation where those who are not looked after by their landlords can receive support, but, as I have already said, my concern is that the Bill goes too far in the opposite direction.

[Graham Stuart]

With the freedom of being on the Back Benches, I can say that the last Conservative Government got this wrong. When they stopped landlords being able to offset the interest payments on the mortgage for that commercial asset against their income, it was one step among many that reduced the number of landlords coming into the market. Each step along the way, instead of seeking to strengthen the market, successive Governments—Conservative then, and the process is bound to be completed by Labour now—moved against landlords to make it a less and less investable asset. Ultimately, those who lose out most are tenants.

[Rebecca Smith]

I agree with my right hon. Friend that ultimately tenants are at risk of losing out if there are no properties left in the market. That leads me on to my next point and one of the other reasons why an assessment would be useful in the light of new clause 20. We heard in Committee that rural landlords are particularly concerned. According to the Country Land and Business Association, 44% of landlords are planning to sell in the next two years, and only 21% are planning to build new properties. When 90% of those planning to leave cite reforms to the private rented sector as a reason, we need an opportunity to reflect and to see the impact assessment.

Having set out some of my reasons for supporting new clause 20, I will turn briefly to new clause 15, which has been mentioned many times already. I appreciate why it has been tabled in the tragic circumstances that have been laid out. In the light of some conversations we had in Committee, I am interested to see who is in scope to be considered family for the purposes of that guarantor system. The new clause lists

“child…grandchild…parent…grandparent…sibling…niece or nephew…aunt or uncle…or, a cousin”.

That is a wide but—I think we would all agree—highly realistic view of what family is. However, in schedule 1 to the Bill, a landlord can only evict an existing tenant to house a parent, grandparent, sibling, child or grandchild.

I raised this matter with the Minister in Committee, and I know that he thinks tenants’ rights would be inhibited if we extended the definition of family, but I find it puzzling that a wide extended family is justified in new clause 15, but not in the determination of who lives in a property under schedule 1. Often, those family members may be vulnerable themselves and need somewhere to live. It is a niche point, but for the Government to say that someone cannot house their niece or nephew—or, in the light of new clause 15, their aunt, uncle or cousin—feels like an overreach of the state. We are slightly testing ownership rights and restricting trust and freedom in society as a result.