My Lords I begin by declaring my interests as in the register and, in particular, as a part-owner, with my wife, of rented property. I am also currently chair of a working group for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, which advises the Minister for Housing and Homelessness on regulation of estate agents and letting and managing agents.
It is a great honour to be piloting this important Private Member’s Bill through Your Lordships’ House. Its promoter in the other place has been the heroic Karen Buck, MP for Westminster North. She has been the most dedicated and committed campaigner, not just for this Bill, but for her many constituents with serious housing problems. Her desire to see the provisions of the Bill on the statute book comes from valiantly seeking to resolve hundreds, possibly thousands, of awful real-life cases of housing misery. I salute her for all her work and for successfully taking the Bill through the other place. I also pay tribute to Giles Peaker and Justin Bates, two lawyers with extensive and highly relevant experience, who have worked tirelessly to draft and perfect the Bill. I commend the Government for having the good sense to give the Bill their full support.
The Bill comes to us with backing from all quarters including, prominently, those bodies representing both landlords—the National Landlords Association and the Residential Landlords Association—and tenants, such as Shelter, Generation Rent and others. As Alan Ward, chair of the Residential Landlords Association, has written:
“The Bill seeks to achieve what we all want: better enforcement of existing laws and regulations against ... the criminals who bring the sector into disrepute”.
It seeks to improve housing conditions for those living in circumstances that can well be described as unfit for human habitation. The public at large may think that slums are a thing of the past and that, if any still exist, there are plenty of laws and regulations to force recalcitrant landlords to bring them up to minimum standards. Sadly, neither of these assumptions is correct. There are around 1 million households forced to live in so-called non-decent properties. The English Housing Survey of last year recorded 750,000 properties which present a,
“serious and immediate risk to a person’s health and safety”,
with 225,000 in the social housing sector. Yet the law is woefully inadequate in compelling the owners of these properties to bring them up to standard.
Karen Buck has quoted many examples from her own constituency. One tenant living with her partner and two children writes that her son has been,
“in a coma at St. Mary’s hospital due to a virus caused by excessive cold. The mould and damp in the house”,
says this tenant,
“turns our clothing, toothbrushes and cups black. I cannot begin to explain how many hospital visits we have had”.
Another tenant complains about her,
“freezing cold, smelly, damp, mouldy flat”.
and says,
“the cold aches my bones and muscles. The damp and mould affects my asthma. As a type 1 diabetic and asthmatic I am constantly ill living in this flat”.
She concludes:
“I guess the way they are progressing, it will be done the day I am being removed from this flat in a coffin”.—[Official Report, Commons, 26/10/18; col. 536.]
These cases demonstrate not only the hardship caused by bad housing conditions but the cost of this to the NHS and wider society.
The Bill addresses the need for a serious overhaul of current legislation in England. Separate measures apply in Scotland and Northern Ireland and, for the most part, in Wales too. It addresses the current legislative inadequacies in three key ways. First, it makes it clear that it is not lawful to let substandard property. Currently, there is indeed a requirement in law, in the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, which consolidated much earlier legislation, for privately rented homes to be “fit for human habitation” at the beginning of a tenancy and to be maintained at this level. But this requirement has ceased to have effect because it covers properties only with rents below a limit set many decades ago—a rent limit of £52 per annum, or £80 per annum in London. The Bill would remove this wildly outdated constraint, obliging landlords to ensure that all properties are fit for human habitation, with no exceptions, based on a rent limit.
With the offence of letting an unfit property restored once more, tenants would have the chance to take an offending landlord to court. This constitutes a significant change in the landlord/tenant relationship. Currently, tenants cannot take direct legal action themselves and are entirely reliant on their local authority to serve environmental health enforcement notices on the landlord and to enforce these. With local authorities short of funds, few have found it possible to take such action on any scale: in 2016-17, half of all councils served no such notices, or only one. The position changes radically with this Bill affording tenants the right to take action themselves and, on their own behalf, enforce their right to a safe and healthy home.
Secondly, the Bill addresses the problem of defining what “fit for human habitation” means. It does not add any new regulations or requirements on landlords but simply draws together all the existing obligations in this regard: the nine criteria used in the 1985 Act and the key health and safety features covering the core hazards used in the current housing, health and safety rating system—HHSRS—brought in by the Housing Act 2004. The Bill, therefore, consolidates and clarifies what constitutes an unfit property.
It is true that the HHSRS has itself been criticised as too complex and open to varied local interpretation. However, the Government have undertaken to review and revise it next year and the Bill’s definition of fitness will take on board, without further legislative action, any changes made to the HHSRS.
Thirdly, for the first time, the Bill gives the same rights to tenants of local authorities to insist on the fitness of their property as tenants of private landlords. At present the local authority, as the enforcement body, cannot take action against itself, which leaves council tenants powerless in this respect. The Bill enables these tenants to compel their local authority to carry out the works needed for the property to meet proper standards.
Moreover, thanks to an amendment to the Bill in the other place, its provisions cover health and safety hazards in shared areas and communal spaces in blocks of flats. As we all know from the ghastly tragedy of Grenfell Tower, there are apartment blocks where tenants are exposed to serious dangers. The residents of Grenfell Tower raised their concerns about the safety of the building on many occasions, but their voices were not heard and they had no means of forcing their landlord to take action. This Bill gives council tenants, like private sector tenants, the power to take their case straight to the courts.
The vast majority of landlords and tenants will be unaffected by the measures in the Bill but it will redress the obvious imbalance in a market where acute shortages currently favour the provider at the expense of the consumer. The Bill empowers all tenants by replacing a now defunct legal obligation on the landlord with a real, enforceable obligation. It defines what the legal obligation covers for homes to be fit for human habitation and extends that obligation to council landlords as well as private ones. In every respect, this is a valuable and commendable legislative measure.
Will the Bill mean an end to the problems faced by tenants in the private rented sector? No—it is limited in scope and there remains much to do. Now that Westminster and Whitehall have begun to catch up with the phenomenal change in the scale of private renting and the effects of this on millions of households in this country, there is a new willingness to bring forward a range of legislative changes.
The Government have started with action against rogue landlords: fining and banning the criminals; laws against retaliatory evictions; the enforcement of electrical safety measures; an extension of licensing for houses in multiple occupation; the ban on tenant fees, which we are currently debating in your Lordships’ House; the regulation of property agents; an exploration of longer tenancies and the possibility of new housing courts; the creation of an ombudsman for complaints against landlords; and more.
Sadly, these changes do not include restoring full legal aid to enable tenants fighting cases about unfit property to claim damages. Nor have the Government yet agreed to reverse the reductions, in real terms, to housing benefit. The current caps and cuts mean that many tenants face real poverty because they have to cover a rental shortfall from their meagre income from other benefits. But these are matters for other government departments and another time.
Meanwhile, this Private Member’s Bill—a great example of cross-party co-operation in the cause of social justice—takes pride of place amid the other new measures to upgrade the private rented sector. It is a particularly valuable piece of the whole because it gets
to the heart of the matter. It addresses the key issue of whether the product on offer— the house or flat for rent—is fit for purpose and, if not, it empowers the tenant to get that sorted.
I close by underlining the deep appreciation of all of us with an interest in housing matters for the dedication, compassion and commitment of this Bill’s parent, Karen Buck. I hope noble Lords will give it a very fair wind. I beg to move.
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