New Clause 15 - Notices to quit by tenants under assured tenancies: timing

Part of Renters (Reform) Bill – in the House of Commons am 2:30 pm ar 24 Ebrill 2024.

Danfonwch hysbysiad imi am ddadleuon fel hyn

Photo of Matthew Pennycook Matthew Pennycook Shadow Minister (Levelling Up, Housing, Communities and Local Government) 2:30, 24 Ebrill 2024

I rise on behalf of the Opposition to speak to the new clauses and amendments that stand in my name.

It is a pleasure to finally be back in the Chamber to conclude the remaining stages of this important piece of legislation. I say “finally” because as you will know, Madam Deputy Speaker, the Bill left Committee on 28 November last year—almost five months ago. Indeed, such has been the delay in bringing it back to the House that in the intervening 147 days, the Department even managed to complete all the Commons stages of another piece of housing legislation—albeit a distinctly limited and unambitious one—in the form of the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill.

The reason for the delay is, of course, an open secret, with the ongoing resistance to the legislation from scores of Government Members—including many with relevant interests, as private renters across the country have certainly noted—and the undignified wrangling between them and Ministers splashed across the papers for months. The damage caused by the discord on the Government Benches has been significant: not only have thousands of additional private renters been put at risk of homelessness as a result of being served a section 21 notice in the months for which the Bill’s remaining stages have been delayed; the sector as a whole has been left in limbo, not knowing whether the Bill will proceed at all and, if it does, what form it will take.

Indeed, such has been the frustration at the impact on landlords and tenants of the endless rumour, speculation and off-the-record briefings that have taken place, two organisations as different in their outlooks as Crisis and the National Residential Landlords Association felt compelled to come together to issue a joint statement, pleading with the Government to bring to an end the destabilising and damaging uncertainty and lack of progress. It has now finally been brought to an end: not with Ministers summoning up the courage to face down their unruly Back Benchers—as they could have done, with the votes of Labour Members if required—but, as is par for the course with this weak and divided Conservative Government, with a series of concessions designed to placate those Back Benchers at the expense of private renters, who will see a number of the rights and protections initially provided for by the Bill watered down.

The very fact that the Government are now suggesting that the Bill requires further significant amendment is ironic, given that the argument repeatedly made in Committee by the Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Jacob Young, as he resisted 81 Labour amendments was that the Bill as originally drafted struck precisely the right balance between the interests of landlords and those of tenants. Today, he has been put in the undignified position of having to come to the Dispatch Box to ask the House to accept in good faith that conversations with Conservative Back Benchers in the wake of Committee stage have convinced the Government in all sincerity that more amendments are now essential to ensure that balance is kept. It is frankly laughable—the reality of the grubby political horse-trading that has taken place within the Government is entirely transparent. The truth is that when it comes to this Bill, the only balance that the Government have ever sought to strike is between attempting to honour the letter of the 2019 Conservative party manifesto commitment and appeasing the vested interests pressing for the very minimum amount of reform required to assert that that commitment has been met.

Before I turn to the detail of the amendments before us, let me briefly set out Labour’s position on the Bill as we consider its remaining stages. With the Government having promised private renters over five years ago that they would scrap section 21 no-fault evictions, we maintain that this legislation is shamefully overdue. Given that any further delay would cause yet more harm, both to private tenants who are desperately in need of greater rights and protections and to responsible landlords who, above all else, require certainty, we believe that as imperfect as the Bill is, it is essential that it completes its passage today. Despite our best efforts in Committee, the Bill still contains numerous defects, deficiencies, omissions and loopholes that would allow the minority of disreputable landlords to exploit tenants and jeopardise their security of tenure. We remain, therefore, firmly of the view that the Bill is not yet fit for purpose and must be strengthened for the benefit of renters. As the Government appear determined to do the opposite and further tilt the playing field towards the landlord interest, we are determined not only to continue to press for those changes that we argued for in Committee, but to oppose those Government amendments that are detrimental to the interests of private tenants and that jeopardise the integrity of the Bill as introduced and risk fatally undermining it.

With the former objective in mind, I turn first to the amendments and new clauses that we have tabled for consideration. Nearly all are identical to the ones we pressed to a Division in Committee: they aim, among other things, to increase the minimum notice period in respect of de facto no-fault possession grounds from two to four months; remove the punitive and draconian new ground 8A relating to repeated rent arrears; better protect renters against unreasonable within-tenancy rent increases; allow the tribunal to make rent repayment orders for additional specific breaches; prohibit rental bidding wars; extend Awaab’s law to the private rented sector; and maintain the existing ground 14 definition of antisocial behaviour, rather than the Government’s expansive new definition of being “capable of causing” annoyance or nuisance. I commend each of those amendments and new clauses to the House.

Of particular importance to us is the need to ensure that section 21 evictions are definitively abolished at the point that the Bill becomes law. As drafted, the legislation provides for a two-stage commencement process for the introduction of the new tenancy regime, with the precise dates for new and existing tenancies to transition determined by the Secretary of State. We made it clear in Committee that we believe that this two-stage transition process is the right approach: it would clearly not be sensible to enact the whole of part 1, chapter 1 of the Bill immediately on Royal Assent. However, we argued that landlords and tenants should be given certainty about precisely when the Government’s manifesto commitment to abolish section 21 no-fault evictions will be enacted.

In resisting our efforts in Committee to amend the Bill so that section 21 is repealed on the day the Bill is formally approved, the Minister argued—as the Government have consistently done since announcing the concession in their response of 20 October 2023 to the Select Committee—that it would be wrong to do so until the courts are ready. The problem is that the Government have never been able to clearly articulate precisely what “ready” in that context means. Indeed, after weeks of debate in Committee, what Ministers believe the necessary court improvements encompass and what criteria will be used to determine whether sufficient progress has been achieved remain entirely ambiguous.

Hon. Members may recall that the background briefing note accompanying the King’s Speech suggested that the required improvements relate only to the court possession action process. In contrast, the Government’s response to the Select Committee last year outlined a far more expansive list of “target areas” for improvement, including many elements of the wider package of court reforms alluded to in the White Paper. We had hoped that the Minister would bring some clarity to the matter in Committee, yet in response to forensic questioning from hon. Members about exactly how the Government believe the county court system is underperforming, what the precise nature is of the improvements they believe are required before section 21 is completely abolished and how progress on delivering those improvements will be measured, the hon. Gentleman unfortunately offered little more than vague comments about ongoing digitisation, action to tackle bailiff delays and end-to-end processes.

As a result, as we contemplate sending this Bill to the other place today, not only do renters still have no idea when the new tenancy system will come into force, but they remain entirely in the dark on what may constitute requisite progress on the court reform that Ministers deem necessary. In our view, such a degree of uncertainty is simply unacceptable. The end of no-fault evictions cannot be made dependent on an unspecified degree of future progress in court improvements subjectively determined by Ministers.