10:14 AM, 2nd July 2025, About 2 weeks ago 15
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A Labour peer has criticised the government for accepting only three amendments while rejecting around 300 others to the Renters’ Rights Bill.
During the report stage debate, Lord Hacking blasted the government “for not listening to the House.”
Peers clashed over a number of amendments, including those aimed at retaining fixed-term tenancies and grounds for student evictions.
Lord Hacking slammed the government for failing to listen to Peers.
He said: “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.
“To put it bluntly, the rejection of over 300 amendments shows that they are not listening to this House.”
Lord Hacking, says as a landlord himself he knows the consequences of abolishing fixed-term tenancies and tabled an amendment “to allow landlords and tenants, if they wish, to agree a fixed-term tenancy.”
Other Peers supported his amendment to retain fixed-term tenancies.
Lord Truscott said: “Polls have shown that a majority of tenants and landlords want to have fixed terms, and His Majesty’s Government have given no reason why they think they know best. The arguments against mutually agreed agreements on fixed tenancies are, frankly, unconvincing and threadbare. They result in more, not less, security for tenants, and less chance of familial disruption.”
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, did admit fixed-term tenancies do have some benefits for tenants but rejected Lord Hacking’s amendment.
She said: “I accept that fixed terms have some benefit for tenants under the current system because they offer some respite from the awful threat of Section 21, which hangs like the sword of Damocles over tenants’ heads. With Section 21 gone, that advantage will be extinguished, so there is even less reason why a tenant would agree voluntarily to a fixed term. Even if freely agreed, there is nothing equal about a fixed term.
“Under the current system, landlords can rightly seek possession during a fixed term if a tenant breaches the terms of their rental. Possession grounds are available if a tenant misses rent payments, damages the property, commits anti-social behaviour or indeed breaches any term of their tenancy.
“Noble Lords would then imagine that, in a fair contract, a tenant could also terminate the tenancy if the landlord failed to fulfil their responsibilities during the term, but in almost all cases tenants do not have this choice. Landlords can allow properties to fall into disrepair, leave properties unsafe to live in, and still tenants must pay rent month after month. This is fundamentally unbalanced. It is critical that we act to reset the scales.”
However, members of the House of Lords voted by 221 to 196 to keep Amendment 5 seeks to expand ground 4A, which allows students living in HMOs to be evicted in line with the academic year.
The amendment would remove the HMO restriction and allow students living in self-contained accommodation, one and two-bedroom properties, to be evicted each year.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook from the Conservatives says the amendment is not about “throwing out students” but keeping certainty.
She said: “The current restriction on ground 4A, which limited it to properties with three or more bedrooms, is both arbitrary and unfair. Many students, in particular postgraduates, international students and mature students, live in one-bedroom or two-bedroom properties.
In Committee, the Minister said: “Limiting it to HMOs captures the bulk of typical students.”
“The Minister is right: it captures the bulk, but not all of them. When housing is scarce, we need all available options. When choices are limited, we must protect every viable home. Let us be clear: ground 4A is not about throwing students out of their homes, it is about ensuring that landlords can confidently re-let for the next academic year and that students can confidently plan their lives.”
You can watch a clip of Lord Hacking below
Beaver
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Sign Up10:23 AM, 3rd July 2025, About A week ago
Reply to the comment left by Chuck Jaeger at 02/07/2025 - 17:37
If this bill gets in in its present form it's going to be an even tougher ride for tenants. The non-home-grown homeless will probably benefit from the contract with Serco, everyone else will pay the price of incompetence.
Blodwyn
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Sign Up10:33 AM, 3rd July 2025, About A week ago
Talk about turning gold into mud?
Everything any government does especially this one falls apart!
Beaver
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Sign Up10:43 AM, 3rd July 2025, About A week ago
Reply to the comment left by Blodwyn at 03/07/2025 - 10:33
That's absolutely right.
I felt for Rachel Reeves crying in the commons yesterday because I would always feel for another human being crying. But the truth is that lots of people will have lost work, had their hours reduced, or be facing the failure of their businesses because she raised the minimum wage and employer's NI and others of her colleagues made it more risky to employ people: These people have more right to cry than she does.
Even if Rachel Reeves has other personal tragedy going on in her life, the people who had had the consequences of the rise in taxes inflicted upon them...people working in coffee shops...small business owners...also have personal problems going on in their lives and now have to deal with losing income on top of those problems. They have far more right to cry and they shouldn't have to pay the price of government incompetence because government took choice away from them.
However, politics is a dirty game, we don't know what goes on behind the closed doors of treasury meetings, we don't know what pressure Rachel Reeves is under, and there may be an element of scapegoating.
But because neither labour, the conservatives nor the SNP have a monopoly on competence, the government needs to be really careful not to interfere in the bits of the market that actually work for the public good because when the market provides competition and choice for citizens this serves a public benefit. Hopefully a few people in the lords are competent enough to see this and will realise that the Competition and Markets Authority needs to take a look at the really stupid bits of this bill before anybody inflicts the politics of jealousy on the rental market.
Judith Wordsworth
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Sign Up7:58 AM, 5th July 2025, About A week ago
Reply to the comment left by Jo Westlake at 02/07/2025 - 11:45
One is no longer a student = all occupants are liable for the council tax
Judith Wordsworth
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Sign Up8:05 AM, 5th July 2025, About A week ago
Reply to the comment left by Cider Drinker at 02/07/2025 - 15:57
Your tenancy should detail what happens at the end of the fixed term ie becomes a Contractual Periodic tenancy.
If it doesn’t say anything then and rolls on = Statutory Periodic.
If, at some time in the future, all tenancies are Statutory Periodic it must be remembered that some tenancy documentation will have to be re-served on or before the anniversary ie How to Rent etc or could face fines etc when ending tenancies with s8 Grounds.