Renters’ Rights Bill

Clause 15

Other duties

I beg to move, That this House agrees with the Lords in their amendments 19B, 19C and 19D.

With this it will be convenient to consider the Government motion to agree with the Lords in their amendments 39B and 39C.

Today is a momentous day, because, subject to agreement from this House, the Renters’ Rights Bill will have completed all its stages and will therefore shortly become law. This House last legislated to fundamentally alter the relationship between landlords and tenants in 1988—I was just six years old. In the decades since, England’s private rented sector has changed beyond all recognition. It now houses not just the young and the mobile, but many older people and families with children, for whom greater security and certainty is essential to a flourishing life.

The need to overhaul the regulation of the private rented sector and, in so doing, level decisively the playing field for landlords and tenants is pressing. That is why we introduced the Bill within months of taking office. We promised that we would succeed where the previous Conservative Government had failed by legislating to transform the experience of private renting. I am delighted that we are now within touching distance of seeing the Bill become law. Before I turn to the final amendments agreed to in the other place, I want to put on the record once again my profound thanks to Baroness Taylor for so ably guiding through its House of Lords stages.

I, too, welcome the Bill becoming law. Personally, I wish that it also regulated rent levels, but my question is: how quickly will it become law to protect people? While this Bill has been winding its way through Parliament over the last year, many have faced the appalling situation of no-fault eviction. Many have lost their properties as a result, whereas they would have been protected had the Bill become law more quickly. Can the Minister give me some idea—so that I can give some comfort to my constituents who are facing no-fault eviction—of how quickly they will get protection, and will there be any retrospective element to it?

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that point. We want to provide both renters and landlords with certainty about how the new system will be implemented. I will say a bit more on that in the course of my remarks.

Will the Minister give way?

I am going to make a bit more progress.

As I made clear when we considered Lords amendments to the Bill on 8 September, although the Government were not prepared to accept amendments that would undermine the core principles of the Bill, we were more than willing to make sensible changes in response to the legitimate concerns that have been raised. The changes we are proposing today are firmly within the spirt of that commitment. I am delighted that we were able to reach agreement with those on the Liberal Democrat Front Bench and Lord Young of Cookham, and I thank all the noble Lords involved for their willingness to work collaboratively to strengthen the Bill.

Let me briefly set out the purpose and effect of the amendments in question, beginning with those that relate to shared owners. Lords amendments 19B, 19C and 19D exempt shared owners from the 12-month “no re-let” period in respect of new mandatory possession ground 1A, which allows a landlord to evict a tenant because they intend to sell their property. The exemption is subject to meeting set criteria, to ensure that shared owners have made a genuine attempt to sell their property. The amendments in question also include a delegated power to remove the exemption in the future—for example, once the building safety programme has been completed.

I welcome what the Minister has proposed. More and more of these issues have come to my attention in my constituency. Tenants then have to find alternative and affordable accommodation that is close to their work and close to their children’s education. I know this legislation applies to England and Wales only—I understand that. But the Minister is a good Minister, and he always shares information on the legislation that is put forward with the regional assemblies—in my case, the Northern Ireland Assembly. Will he do me and this House the favour of sharing the legislation with the Northern Ireland Assembly to ensure that the good things in the Bill can become good things for us in Northern Ireland as well?

The Northern Ireland Assembly can access this legislation online, but I will certainly continue to have conversations with Ministers in all the devolved Administrations about what lessons can be learned from what we have done with this Bill, and about what they can take from it.

I once again commend Lord Young of Cookham for championing the interests of shared owners affected by the building safety crisis, and I thank him for tabling his three amendments in lieu. As I made clear when we considered Lords amendments last month, the Government recognise the plight of shared owners living in buildings that require remediation. Many are facing unaffordable costs, often with no viable exit route other than a distress sale. We also appreciate that it is often harder to secure a purchaser for a shared ownership property, and that the sales of shared ownership flats are more likely to fall through due to the additional constraints involved. As such, we have always accepted that the 12 month no re-let period would have placed many shared owners in an extremely challenging position.

The reason why the Government did not feel able to accept Lord Young’s original Lords amendment 19 was that it could undermine protections for the small subset of tenants who happened to rent a sub-let home from a shared owner. I am therefore pleased to report to the House that the amendments in lieu deliver the core aims of that original amendment, while also ensuring that three key safeguards are in place to protect tenants.

First, there is a requirement for the shared owner to have informed the assured subtenant in writing at the outset of the tenancy about the exemption and its possible use. This will ensure tenants are aware of the particular circumstances of the tenancy they are entering into and can make an informed choice about whether they wish to enter into a tenancy agreement with the shared owner in question.

I thank the Minister for listening to Liberal Democrat colleagues who have made these points, as I have along with my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos), on previous occasions. It is very good that those living in military service accommodation will now have the opportunity to access the decent homes standard. Could the Minister assure me that he will work with colleagues in the Ministry of Defence to ensure that all service families are aware of the decent homes standard—the standard to which they can hold their accommodation providers—so they can live in better homes in my constituency of Bicester and Woodstock and across the country?

We have ongoing dialogue with colleagues in the Ministry of Defence about this issue, and if the hon. Member will allow me, I will elaborate on how we think these amendments will work in practice and how they interact with what the Ministry of Defence is itself doing. First, however, I once again thank Baroness Grender, Baroness Thornhill and the hon. Members for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) and for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) for their continued support and advocacy for service personnel and their families.

The Government have been clear throughout the passage of the Bill that our armed services personnel and their families must live in safe and decent homes. We remain determined to improve the standard of service family accommodation across the entire defence estate. Alongside the commitment to drive up standards through a record investment of £1.5 billion in service family accommodation over the next five years, the Government will soon publish a defence housing strategy setting out clear renewal standards and further steps to improve the lives of those who serve our country. That standard will be published, so service families will be able to see, judge their accommodation against and interact with this new statutory duty.

As I outlined in the previous debate on Lords amendments, the Government acknowledge the need for greater transparency and accountability to ensure that the commitments we have made are honoured. The amendments in lieu will place the commitments I made to this House last month on a statutory basis. The Government believe that this, alongside the wider steps I have already set out, will help ensure service personnel and their families have the quality of homes that they deserve. The amendments also include a delegated power allowing the housing quality standards that SFA is assessed against to be updated when the current version of the decent homes standard is no longer considered appropriate—for example, when it has been replaced by a new modernised standard. The Liberal Democrats have indicated their support for these amendments, and I hope hon. Members will join me in supporting them.

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

We are considering the Lords amendments in lieu to the Renters’ Rights Bill, and I begin by recognising the work that has taken place in both Houses to improve this legislation, and by thanking their lordships for the constructive way in which they have approached this endeavour.

On the amendments themselves, the issue of shared ownership leaseholders was rightly championed in the Lords by my noble Friend Lord Young of Cookham, and I pay tribute to him for his persistence. He made a fair and compelling case for shared owners who, through no fault of their own, may be unable to sell their share and should not be penalised for re-letting in those circumstances. The Government’s acceptance of that principle, although through a modified amendment, is a sensible and pragmatic improvement, which we will therefore support.

On the decent homes standard and the service family accommodation estate, the Government have placed a duty on the Secretary of State to report on the conditions of service family accommodation and provide independent oversight. Our armed forces and their families deserve and need decent, well-maintained homes, and we believe that greater transparency will strengthen service families’ confidence in the system. We support this improvement, and we hope that the Government will look at our policy to create an armed forces housing association that would oversee these changes and address the declining recruitment and retention rates that, sadly, we have seen under this Government.

While we support these improvements, I fear the Bill in its current form will in some areas be counterproductive, and drive landlords from the market as well as putting up rents for tenants. Labour’s own impact assessment for this Bill supports that concern, stating that

“landlords can pass through some, but not all, of their cost increases to their tenants in the form of higher rent”

The shadow Secretary of State knows that I have a great deal of time for him as a person, but he must reflect on how all of his speech is about the rights of the landlord with absolutely nothing about the rights of tenants. In my own constituency, 600 children are in temporary accommodation, having largely been driven out of their private rented accommodation because of no-fault evictions. Does he have anything to say about the rights of tenants?