My Lords, the purpose of this amendment is to remove from the Bill the provision for mandatory fixed-term tenancies. I understand that later on in this debate we will get a constructive and helpful response from Ministers that I hope will go some considerable way to addressing the concerns I have about this issue. I am extremely grateful for that: it is another example of a Minister listening and responding to the issues we have raised.
Nevertheless, it is worth explaining why the amendment is so important and what it goes to the heart of. It effectively addresses the issue of whether we see council properties as genuine homes or as houses or even a temporary welfare provision, because that is the direction of travel that this policy takes us in. In the previous debate about the so-called pay-to-stay provisions, I used an example and I will use another to illustrate my point. This one is a little closer to home and involves my wife.
My wife lived until the age of five in rented rooms. It is important to say “rented rooms” because they were not a house or a flat. They were rooms in a house. There were two rooms to be precise. One was the living room and the other was the bedroom, which she shared with her parents. The other facilities—the bathroom, kitchen and so forth—were all shared. At the age of five, she moved into a three-bedroom council property. She still remembers that move, less because of the personal impact on her—she was too young to know—and more because of the incredible excitement of her parents. For the first time they had a permanent dwelling that met their needs. She lived in Nottingham. Why was it possible for her to move into that home? The answer is that this was 1962 and Nottingham had embarked on a massive council property construction programme. Her family was one of the lucky ones who moved into that property.
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Would they have felt the same way about that move if what they had been offered instead was a five-year fixed-term tenancy? They might of course have heard reassuring noises, as the Minister mentioned in Committee, that perhaps it would be okay and it would almost certainly be possible to roll over the tenancy; but would they have felt as if it was their home? The answer is pretty clear. They would not. Their response and reaction to that move would have been entirely different.
That is essentially what we are doing through the provisions in the Bill, unless they are changed. We know now that the problems are if anything more acute than when my wife was moving, rather than less, but we are saying to people who have typically been in a temporary and inadequate property for the best part of their lives that we are now moving them into another temporary or insecure property. We are moving
into a world in which people’s ability to stay in their property is driven by whether the state, in this case the Government, deems them to be deserving of continuing with that property. That is not a home.
That is one personal example. What does the evidence tell us so far about the impact of secure tenancy? Of course, in a sense, we do not need to guess what the impact is—we already have voluntary arrangements in place. Some 13% of new lets are on fixed-term tenancies. I am indebted to Shelter for drawing to my attention a piece of academic research on this issue, undertaken by Professor Suzanne Fitzpatrick and Dr Beth Watts of Heriot-Watt University. This work has been done as part of a consortium involving local authorities and universities across the country under the heading “Welfare Conditionality”. The research finds that those doctors are becoming increasingly disillusioned with the effect of this policy. They are finding, certainly, that some tenants are unaware that they are on a fixed-term tenancy, but, more, are deeply anxious about the uncertainty that comes with that, and that the more dependent they are, the more anxious they are.
Can we conceive of a situation in which families with school-age children might be forced to move out of their property when the children are at school? The noble Lord, Lord Bassam, spoke very eloquently about this issue, which goes to the heart of the ambition we all have to create stable, successful communities. Such communities need stable tenants; without them, investment in the community is unlikely, because of uncertainty about the future.
This provision is neither necessary nor appropriate. The early evidence from local authorities that have tried it is that it simply does not work, and they are moving back from it. I recognise that there is a government ambition to make changes here, and I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.