Member

As has already been explained—but I will repeat—the amendment would not prohibit guarantors but would limit their use, so as to reduce their potentially discriminatory impact. I am afraid that my noble friend the Minister did not really address this argument in her response in Committee. Does she not accept the evidence that I and my noble friend have presented that requiring a high-earning or home-earning guarantor is all too often used in a discriminatory way? I am thinking in particular, as my noble friend said, of social security recipients, disabled tenants and members of racialised minorities, who are disproportionately likely to be asked for a guarantor.