All the agreements for letting residential properties in this country are extremely complicated. In Australia, there is just one in New South Wales. I do not know about other states because there is not a federal law. In New South Wales, you just go into the local paper shop and pay $7.50. That is your letting agreement and everyone—big and small, rich and poor—abides by those. There is about an inch and a half in which you could type quite a lot of special agreed clauses but the rest of the format is a basic thing. It is so simple.
The point made by the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, that this amendment is rather over-balanced against the landlord is relevant and important. Are you going to create a different type of tenancy from the assured shorthold? What will you do in cases where the landlord dies and his family is obliged to pay all death duties in advance of getting probate? What will happen under those circumstances? If you must sell the property with a sitting tenant, of course you will not get anything like the full value. Will the Exchequer allow for that and value the property down accordingly, or will it be done on the open-market value of the vacant property? What would be the special provision where the tenant was not paying the rent and that had built up? Would that all be covered by a new type of tenancy agreement? There are so many complexities that we need to look at here, so this is rather badly balanced.
I think the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, described people as being at the whim of bad landlords. I am sure that anyone who has a bad landlord is pretty unfortunate but there are so many honest, reliable landlords and, likewise, many good tenants who are happy. I know many people who have rented for years and are still in the same property after well over a decade, as was mentioned. There is a difference between that and the fact that the landlord is obliged to offer three years while the tenant can go any time at two months’ notice. That seems a bit extreme, one way or the other.