Lord Hacking (Lab)

My Lords, I start off with my declaration, which is in the register, that my wife and I own five one-bedroom flats in the next-door house to ours, and we have been renting out those flats for the last 30 years. As we approach the 126 amendments now tabled for Report, and before I introduce my Amendment 1, I suggest that we take stock of where we are after seven days in Committee. I start by giving praise to my noble friend the Minister. Throughout Committee, she was always very well briefed, and she spoke to every amendment with great politeness, naming and thanking everyone who spoke. She was always available to have meetings and discussions about the Bill. I know, too, from her days as a councillor in Stevenage, about her great concern that landlord and tenant legislation should not make families homeless—she feels that very strongly. I say to her: thank you, Sharon. However, there has been a big problem. Out of the 300-odd amendments tabled in Committee, the Government did not accept a single one—I think I am right in saying that; if I am wrong, I hope that somebody will correct me. It is true that, in the Minister’s letter of 24 June, the Government, through the Minister, have accepted three amendments. I am very grateful for that, but that is a very small number against the rejection of 300 amendments. By applying normal averages, it cannot be right that the Government were always right in Committee on all these amendments and that the rest of us were always wrong. Moreover, in Committee, there was considerable expertise in landlord and tenant matters among Members of the House. At least a dozen of us have had that direct experience. At least half a dozen of us were declared landlords of the good and honest variety. When I joined this House 53 years ago, there was good willingness in the House to listen to the expertise of its Members—after all, that is what we are here to provide. It now seems that the Government were not prepared, during the passage of the Bill, to listen to the expertise of the House. To put it bluntly, the rejection of over 300 amendments shows that they are not listening to this House. I do not blame the Minister; I simply do not know who was responsible for the decisions that resulted in those multiple rejections. The consequence is quite serious. As I will seek to show in relation to Amendments 1 and 41, there have been occasions when the Government have got it plain wrong, because they were not listening. As a Labour Back-Bencher, I want the Government to succeed—and they would do that much better if they were able to listen more. Therefore, on Report, may the Government start listening to us. The purpose of Amendment 1 is to allow landlords and tenants, if they wish, to agree a fixed-term tenancy. My and my wife’s experience is as follows. We have nearly always let 12-month tenancies to our tenants. Our tenants—currently the whole lot—are couples in their 30s who are planning to own a home of their own. It therefore suits us, as well as our tenants, to agree a 12-month tenancy. After the first 12 months, we meet to discuss whether our tenants want to stay on for another 12 months; they sometimes want to stay on for three or four years or even longer. If any of them want to go early, within the 12-month period, we give full co-operation. We immediately seek new tenants. The outgoing tenants pay their rent as long as they are present in their flat and not thereafter when the new tenant has arrived. Indeed, I do not think that we have ever failed promptly to find new tenants, which is because we let out lovely flats with private use of the garden at the back of the house.