Lord Young of Cookham (Con)

My Lords, I do not share the delirium of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, for the reintroduction of rent controls, not least because I was a Housing Minister in the 1979-83 Parliament, which dismantled the rent controls that had strangulated the private market. I want to add a brief footnote to the excellent speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Best, on Amendments 79, 84 and 85. Of the many reasons he gave, the last one attracted me. I see it as avoiding all the problems that arose in the last debate on the Government’s proposals for dealing with rent increases, in which there is no incentive for the tenant not to appeal. We all listened to the Minister’s defence of what is proposed. I may have misread the mood of the Committee, but I am not sure she carried the Committee with her. The noble Lord, Lord Best, set out the reasons for avoiding overloading tribunals with appeals by inserting a formula for rent increases for four years. Other amendments propose different formulae. In the other place, the Minister explained that he wanted to avoid rent controls. I fully understand that institutional investment will be deterred by the reintroduction of rent control, which effectively nearly ended the private rented sector. The proposals in the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Best, to restrict increases to RPI to four years, strikes the balance between rents falling out of line with market rents and the regime proposed in the Bill, with all the risks that were referred to in the last debate. Over four years, it is unlikely that there will be a serious deviation between RPI and rents. I did a little research on this; the average annual rent inflation in the UK from 1989 to 2023 was 3.71%. I recognise that figure may have been depressed by rents in the public sector. The long-run average in RPI is 3.6%, so there is not a lot of difference between those two figures. My final point, which was touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Best, is that the Minister and I are at one in wanting long-term institutional investment in rented accommodation. In our last two exchanges at Oral Questions, she has confirmed that we are at one on this. The institutions want the rent to go up each year, either in line with RPI, as proposed in the amendment, or in line with market rents, as in the Bill. They do not want reasonable increases to be regularly challenged by tenants who can simply defer any increase by appealing. What consultations has the Minister had with the pension funds, insurance companies and long-term institutional investors about whether they prefer the proposal from the noble Lord, Lord Best, or want to live with all the risks in the Bill? She may not have the answer at the moment, but I hope she will consult with those people, whom we want to invest in housing, and see which of these alternative measures they are in favour of.