Baroness Thornhill (LD)

I have to confess to the noble Lord that I had written down exactly what he said—that these are not two nice amendments to bring in fixed tenancies by the back door—but then I thought, “He’s actually just creating a new ground for repossession”. What I am concerned about from the previous debate and this one—and I urge the Minister to clarify this—is that there seems to be an idea that rolling tenancies are unstable. I have several friends who are landladies, and we have had discussions about this over one or two glasses of wine and—believe it or not—they are not fazed by this. They have not reacted hysterically, because their attitude is, “My tenants like to stay long term; I’m a good landlady”; they do not see that that is a problem. But clearly there is a problem because we have had the reaction. I say to the Minister that the messaging has somehow got lost that this is not a less secure tenancy and that, in fact, the expectation is that the tenancy will roll on, and I believe the Government have tried to make the paperwork and things easier for that to happen. If that messaging was correct, I do not see why a tenant would need incentivising to stay if everything was going okay. So forgive me if I sound perplexed: I thought I had a clear view about this, but the noble Lord has kind of knocked me there. I think it is because of the messaging that we have had about the instability of rolling tenancies, whereas I believe that that is not the case. I would be very interested in what the Minister has to say on that. I appreciate that the noble Lord’s speech was not long; it was engaging oratory and got the little grey cells going.