Private Rented Sector

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Tuesday 17th March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the private rented sector.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. I declare my interest as a landlady to private renters and I refer everyone here to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I know the whole House is focused on the coronavirus—rightfully so—and I think I speak on behalf of everyone here when I say that our thoughts are with those who have lost loved ones and those suffering the symptoms and having to self-isolate. I give a nod to everyone here, including our civil servants who have made the effort to come in. Things are quite scary, and I have just found out that my daughter’s nursery is closing, which is the scariest prospect for the children. I want to talk about how coronavirus will impact those who privately rent, especially those on a low income.

The crisis poses a serious threat to private renters. I wanted to bring this topic up because I do not want people to have to choose between whether they pay rent or self-isolate should they be faced with the symptoms in the months and weeks ahead. I am sure the Minister understands that we need to act now to protect tenants. A large number could be unfairly evicted, which could lead to homelessness if people start to fall behind in paying rent in one of the scariest and most dangerous periods of our history in this country. It is vital that we protect people in the private rented sector from homelessness and vital to insulate them financially to ensure that security of tenure is available to them if they feel they need to self-isolate and cannot go to work. I hope the Minister will seriously consider Labour’s Front Bench proposals on rent deferrals and a ban on evicting those who fall behind in their rent because of coronavirus.

A lot has been talked about coronavirus in terms of what happens if we get it, what we should do, and how we should self-isolate, but one thing missing, perhaps rightly, is what happens when we actually get the symptoms. The godmother of my children—Members need not worry; I have not been near her in weeks—got it and she told me the breath was taken away out of her. She was lying in bed and could not get up. She felt like a shadow of her former self. There was absolutely no way she could go to work, but she is in a situation where, even if she does not go to work, she will still get paid. She is one of the lucky ones because she can continue to live in her house, but that is not the case for all of us, which is why this debate is so important today.

It is not only working-age renters that coronavirus will impact. I have looked at the Office for National Statistics and found a few facts and figures that surprised me. The private rented sector is gradually becoming older as fewer families can afford to buy a home. According to Age UK, more than 700,000 over-60s privately rent in England, and the proportion of households headed by older renters has doubled in the past 15 years. In my constituency of Hampstead and Kilburn, an estimated 937 over-60s are on housing benefit alone. Older renters are more likely than homeowners to have long-term health problems. I am sure other Members are aware from their advice surgeries that problems in the private rented sector are rife. We have probably all dealt with damp walls and other conditions that people live in. We have to ensure that older and more vulnerable renters are protected, which is why this debate is so important today.

We know that poorly maintained housing is rife in the private rented sector. As a democracy, as a Government and as a country, we need to start looking at it more and more, especially as we have been warned over and again that we are more likely to get the virus if we have an underlying health condition.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who is making a passionate speech. The other day at the all-party group on housing and planning, it was pointed out that one in four adults in this country suffers from a diagnosable mental health condition, and one in five says that it is exacerbated by their housing. Does she agree that with this killer/death/invisible pandemic in our midst we should address mental health conditions, too, in the housing picture? Will she also pay tribute to our hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) and her Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018, which the Government agreed to only after Grenfell?

[Tulip Siddiq]

I will pay tribute to our hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) shortly, but what my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) says is very important. I have not mentioned mental health in this speech, because it is already too long, as most people can see. However, every time I hold an advice surgery, 80% of my casework is based on housing. When I deal with housing casework, people say, “Well, I have asthma”, or this or that problem medically, and then, “As a result, I have had mental health problems,” so there is a clear link between the housing conditions that someone lives in and the mental health problems that they may develop. I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend and I hope that the Minister will address this topic.

More and more people are growing old in substandard rented accommodation, and that shines a light on the fact that, as a country, we do not take private renting seriously. Five million people in the UK live in the private rented sector, which is an enormous number, up from 2.8 million in 2007. The proportion of renting households in London, where my hon. Friend and I are MPs, is expected to grow to 40% of the total in five years’ time. Again, these are staggering figures, yet I feel that too often as politicians, and as a Government, we see renting as nothing more than a stepping stone to home ownership. While the aspiration to own a home is common among us, including many of my constituents, the obscene cost of housing, especially in London, puts this dream well out of reach for the hundreds of thousands of private renters who are living on the breadline and the 63% who say that they have no savings at all. We have to do more to tackle the problem facing private renters. The economic and social crisis that we face as a result of coronavirus is shining a light on how many low-income private renters’ lives are fragile, and it lends greater urgency—and maybe provides an opportunity—to address this and provide them with the security and safety that they need.

I want to talk a bit about my constituency of Hampstead and Kilburn, because we have one of the largest proportions of people who live in private rented houses in the country—30% of my constituency privately rents. The more than doubling of the private rented sector over the last 20 years has meant that in the Borough of Camden, which I live in, that type of tenure is now only slightly smaller than the owner-occupied sector. Ahead of this debate, I emailed my constituents to ask them for their experiences and thoughts about it. I was overwhelmed by the number of people who emailed to talk about their experience and how important this issue was to them. Many made the point that privately renting is not a short-term solution for them. They will have to do it for the rest of their lives, and therefore, they feel very passionately that we as politicians should tackle the problems that come with it.

The No. 1 thing that came up over and over again is how unaffordable renting in London is. That came out loud and clear and I am sure that my hon. Friend—a London Member—will recognise that. Renters in Camden face the fourth highest rents in the whole country. The median monthly rent for a two-bedroom flat is over £2,000. That reflects the dramatic growth in rents that we have seen in the last decade, far outstripping any rise in earnings that my constituents may have had.