Contribution
My Lords, I will explain how this amendment came about and be more definitive. It relates to the proposal in the Bill—I think it is in Clause 7—that when a landlord has obtained possession principally on the grounds of a proposed sale of the dwelling and then withdraws from the sale and wants to put the property straight on to the market, he is prevented from doing so for a period of 12 months. The noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, supported by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, moved an amendment in Committee to reduce that period from 12 months to six months. I will leave it to the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, to develop the argument again because he has tabled Amendment 58 in this group. Basically, the noble Lords argued that 12 months was oppressive and far too long, and that there would be a sufficient deterrence against the rogue landlord seeking to put the property on the market for the purpose of raising the rent.
I did not move an amendment in Committee on this subject, but I thought about it and I decided to write a letter to the Minister, which I did on 19 May. My proposal was much simpler: that there should be a prohibition on all landlords raising the rent when, following putting the property on for sale that did not go forward, seeking to let it out again. I really thought that that was a very sensible amendment; I had hoped that my noble friend would congratulate me and say what a good solution I had provided.
The immediate advantages of my proposal were that, first, it dealt directly with the problem of the rogue landlord raising the rent. That, as my amendment proposes, will be forbidden. It would also have the advantage that the landlord would not be penalised for a long period; he could immediately put the property on the letting market and then collect rent. The other great advantage was that the property would be on the market and there would not be an absence of a property on the market, which is always regrettable. It would therefore help to house people who needed rented property.
Unfortunately, my noble friend did not congratulate me on this proposal as set out in my letter. She expressed caution regarding other tenant/landlord situations, such as a landlord getting fed up with a tenant constantly asking for repairs to the property. Another example she gave, which was rather simpler, was that the landlord had got to the point where he did not like the tenant. We must remember that, in either of those situations, the landlord has to enter into a ruse, either pretending that he wants to sell the property or possibly finding a phantom member of his family who does not exist so that he could get possession under the alternative of placing a member of his family in that house.
I am asking the House to measure up the difference between the advantage of imposing a ban on any rent increase and the advantages that I have just outlined of having the property immediately on the market, with the landlord being able to collect his rent as soon as the property is rented. We have to balance that because the measure in the Bill will affect every landlord—the good and the bad. We should have a balance between that and the extraordinary. After all, a landlord cannot successfully evict a tenant just because he dislikes him. Equally, when he is fed up with a tenant who constantly asks for repairs, he cannot bring an action for eviction just because the tenant is pestering him. In both those situations, he has to enter into a ruse.
I am suggesting that the proper balance is to look at the market as a whole—everybody in the market is affected by these measures. Therefore, to release everybody else in the market from the measure proposed serves it. So it is a balance, and I suggest that that balance goes to the market and not to the particular circumstances of a landlord disliking his tenant or getting fed up with a number of requests for repairs. I beg to move.