argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Strathclyde Review — House of Lords, 2016-01-13
Topic: Other
Tina Stowell (Conservative, Centre-right): I have said what we are doing. We will reflect on the very important points that have been made today. My noble friend Lord Trefgarne and his committee will be looking at what has been put forward. There may be other committees of your Lordships’ House that wish to do so as well. We will be considering this in the period ahead; at an appropriate point we will consider which is the best way forward, and I will return to your Lordships’ House My noble friend has done a comprehensive piece of work. As my noble friend Lord Wakeham said, what is in my noble friend’s report is very similar to what was in the report of his commission 16 years ago. Many noble Lords have pointed to that as a way forward. I am not reaching any conclusion tonight on the right way forward, but my noble friend Lord Wakeham’s point is very important and it is worth us all dwelling on it.
Strathclyde Review — House of Lords, 2016-01-13
Topic: Other
Thomas Galloway Dunlop du Roy de Blicquy Galbraith (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, what is so refreshing about the debate we have had today is that we have been discussing what we are here to do, what we are for and what the House of Lords is for. What a contrast that is with the years we spent discussing how to get here. At last we are discussing what we have to do in practice I shall make two short points. First, for me the most significant and interesting contribution was from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, which showed what a good thing it is to have properly qualified senior former members of the judiciary here—with due deference also to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead—and how wrong we were to throw out the Law Lords all those years ago Secondly, and perhaps more substantively, there has been an enormously wide range of views expressed in the debate. I wish the Government the best of luck in trying to bring all this together and come out with a coherent response. It will be difficult My noble friend Lord Young of Cookham heard something that I also heard. Although there were numerous disagreements, if we are going to change the way we debate this, the key area of disagreement is whether it should be by legislation or by agreement. I urge all those who are in favour of doing it by agreement to work within the House and with the Opposition and the Government to see if that agreement would work The noble Lord, Lord Cunningham, misunderstood what I wrote in my report—it is my fault because it was not clear. In my foreword, I talked about conventions, but conventions cannot be imposed by me, by the Government or by the Opposition. They can be reached only by agreement, by good will, by compromise and by joint objective. If that is the result we end up with, I will be the first to cheer Motion agreed.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-01
Topic: Housing
Susan Williams (Conservative, Centre-right): I think that the noble Lord will accept that the fact that the scheme is currently working very well and that some local authorities may actually decide to underwrite the schemes themselves in certain cases to prevent homelessness is—and we are looking after every single penny—a reason not to do something unless there is evidence to say that we would need to do it.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-01
Topic: Other
Susan Williams (Conservative, Centre-right): That is very true. If the noble Baroness will forgive me, I will come back to her. I may well have those figures in my notes, and, during the course of Committee, I will come back to her.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-01
Topic: Housing
Susan Williams (Conservative, Centre-right): I will look at it again, but this is covered in How to Rent. I certainly know from my own experience, and I declare a past interest in this, that within a certain period from the start of a tenancy—I think it is 28 days—not only does the tenancy deposit scheme have to be set up, but the landlord has to produce the certificate in the house. We talked about an electronic version of it. Alarm bells should ring for a tenant if such a scheme has not been set up and evidence produced of it, but maybe I am not getting the right end of the stick.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-01
Topic: Other
Charles Cathcart (Conservative, Centre-right): I think my noble friend has finally sat down. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, for supporting all the amendments. I only wish that the Minister’s response had been the same. Unfortunately, it was rather like a curate’s egg—good in parts. I thank her for agreeing to take away the idea of giving the information electronically. However, I am disappointed in her response to the other two amendments I spoke to. I will read what she said and no doubt my noble friend Lord Flight and I may come back to her, but at this stage I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-01
Topic: Housing
Rachel Trixie Anne Gardner (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I am very interested in this subject—noble Lords know my interests as declared—and I am interested in what is being said today. I think the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, deals with a market that he clearly understands well, and that is interesting. However, I have had many different comments and reports sent to me by different people. My own personal experience is that, when I offer people two years, they say they do not want that; they do not want to be tied to that and would like only a year. Is the landlord obliged to offer them renewals for three years, even if the person wants it for only a year?
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-01
Topic: Housing
Rachel Trixie Anne Gardner (Conservative, Centre-right): All the agreements for letting residential properties in this country are extremely complicated. In Australia, there is just one in New South Wales. I do not know about other states because there is not a federal law. In New South Wales, you just go into the local paper shop and pay $7.50. That is your letting agreement and everyone—big and small, rich and poor—abides by those. There is about an inch and a half in which you could type quite a lot of special agreed clauses but the rest of the format is a basic thing. It is so simple The point made by the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, that this amendment is rather overbalanced against the landlord is relevant and important. Are you going to create a different type of tenancy from the assured shorthold? What will you do in cases where the landlord dies and his family is obliged to pay all death duties in advance of getting probate? What will happen under those circumstances? If you must sell the property with a sitting tenant, of course you will not get anything like the full value. Will the Exchequer allow for that and value the property down accordingly, or will it be done on the open-market value of the vacant property? What would be the special provision where the tenant was not paying the rent and that had built up? Would that all be covered by a new type of tenancy agreement? There are so many complexities that we need to look at here, so this is rather badly balanced I think the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, described people as being at the whim of bad landlords. I am sure that anyone who has a bad landlord is pretty unfortunate but there are so many honest, reliable landlords and, likewise, many good tenants who are happy. I know many people who have rented for years and are still in the same property after well over a decade, as was mentioned. There is a difference between that and the fact that the landlord is obliged to offer three years while the tenant can go any time at two months’ notice. That seems a bit extreme, one way or the other.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-01
Topic: Housing
Susan Williams (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, Amendment 29, if enacted, would introduce a minimum of three-year tenancies in the private rented sector in England and would mean that landlords would not be able to rely on the notice-only or no-fault ground for possession—known as Section 21—within the first three years of a tenancy. Tenants would be able to end the tenancy by giving, as the noble Lord said, two months’ notice at any time Let me make it clear that this Government are committed to building a bigger and better private rented sector which provides security and stability for tenants and flexibility for landlords. We have taken action to support the supply and quality of private rented accommodation by resisting unnecessary and unhelpful regulation while cracking down on the worst practices of some rogue landlords Our model tenancy agreement, introduced in September 2014, promotes longer tenancies for those landlords and tenants who want to sign up to them, but there is no one-size-fits-all approach to tenancy lengths, as noble Lords have said. Many landlords are looking to rent out a property for the longer term, but there will be some for whom letting a property is a short-term plan and who will need the property back at some point, perhaps for their own family to live in, as the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, said. So, the system does need flexibility Although I understand the spirit in which this amendment is tabled, the amendment would be counterproductive. It would overburden the market with restrictive red tape, stifling investment and the supply of rented housing at a time when we most need to encourage it. This would not help landlords or, indeed, tenants Let me explain. Before assured shorthold tenancies were introduced in the Housing Act 1988, the private rental market was in decline. Lifetime tenancies and regulated rents meant that being a landlord was simply not commercially viable for many property owners. But since 1988, the private rented sector has grown steadily—growing from just over 9% of the market in 1988 to 19% today. Landlords, and in most cases tenants, welcome the flexibility of the current assured shorthold tenancy regime, which does not lock either party into long-term commitments and promotes mobility We must be mindful that recent figures show that tenancy lengths are on average three and a half years. However, without the certainty that landlords can seek repossession when required, many would be reluctant to let their properties.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-01
Topic: Housing
Susan Williams (Conservative, Centre-right): It may not go on the market. It may, as I and other noble Lords have said, be for the use of the landlord who owns the property. There are a variety of reasons why a landlord should wish to repossess a property The noble Baroness’s question on retaliatory eviction is very valid. She will remember that the intention of the Deregulation Act 2015 was to provide tenants with protection from such eviction. Where a tenant has raised a legitimate and verified complaint with the local authority they cannot be evicted using the no-fault Section 21 procedure for six months The noble Baroness also talked about buy-to-let mortgages. Mortgage lenders have told us that following the introduction of our model tenancy agreement, with appropriate break clauses, there is no longer any impediment to permitting longer tenancies for their landlord customers. The Nationwide Building Society permits tenancies of up to three years and Barclays for up to two years. Lloyds, the biggest player in the buy-to-let market, is in full agreement in offering three-year tenancies and plans to implement the policy by the summer of 2016. The Housing Minister wrote to the Council of Mortgage Lenders in January, urging it to encourage those lenders who have not changed their policies to do so, and further discussions will be held.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-01
Topic: Housing
Rachel Trixie Anne Gardner (Conservative, Centre-right): May I ask for some clarification? When I sat as a magistrate, we had a case of a tenant whose landlord stopped taking the rent; it was never collected. After some years he was able to come to the court and get the right to buy the property, because, technically, it was abandoned. At the time this seemed to me quite a complex procedure and I wonder where it fits in—whether the tenant is disadvantaged by this amendment, or the owner of the property. I am not sure what the amendment means.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-01
Topic: Housing
Natalie Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank all noble Lords for their amendments and contributions to the debate. As the noble Baroness said, the provisions are hugely important to a small number of landlords whose properties are abandoned by tenants who have stopped paying rent. We estimate that 1,750 properties in the private rented sector are abandoned a year at a cost of about £5 million to recover them. The Government want to ensure that the proper processes are in place before an abandoned property can be recovered Amendment 34 would require local authorities to certify for landlords in their area when a property has been abandoned. We are not convinced, and would echo the words of my noble friend Lord True, that local authorities, which may not have the resources, are necessarily in a better position to pass judgment on the matter. Such a requirement may also cause delays and hinder hard-working landlords and families from renting out empty accommodation. Amendments 35 and 36 would ensure that the minimum warning period before a landlord can recover an abandoned property was 12 weeks, and that a second warning notice was served at least four weeks and no more than eight weeks after service of the first I reassure noble Lords that this is absolutely not about opening a back door to landlords. It is about putting in place a procedure for dealing with abandoned properties that would allow a reputable landlord to recover a property that has been abandoned without the need to obtain a court order. The process includes a number of safeguards to ensure that a landlord can use it only where a tenant has genuinely abandoned a property. As my noble friend Lady Williams said, this is not about rent arrears.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-01
Topic: Housing
Natalie Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): The first warning notice would not in practice be able to be served unless four consecutive weeks’ rent is unpaid, and the second warning notice may be served only when at least eight consecutive weeks is unpaid. So there are specific timescales for which there is unpaid rent. I am not sure whether that fully answers the question; if it does not, perhaps I can come back to noble Lords.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-01
Topic: Housing
Nicholas True (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I do not want to intervene on the Minister, but Clause 56(1)(a) states: "The unpaid rent condition is met if … at least eight consecutive weeks’ rent is unpaid" I follow what the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, said. Clause 57(6) states—perhaps officials could note this—that the, "first warning notice may be given even if the unpaid rent condition is not yet met", In construing the clause, the landlord could think, "Five or six weeks have gone by and I have not had any rent, so I am going to send out a warning notice without waiting for the eight weeks". That is how I would read the Bill.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-01
Topic: Housing
Natalie Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): I set out the overall process but of course we will have to be mindful of people being able to access it. That is why we have put so many checks within the process to ensure that there is an opportunity for the tenant or someone else named as an occupier to respond. The final thing will be a public notice on the property to say what the situation is. We believe that this process as a whole will ensure that tenants are not disadvantaged and, of course, vulnerable tenants are on our mind.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-01
Topic: Other
Natalie Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): I am happy to agree to meet with noble Lords interested in this area so perhaps they could list all their questions and we will try to respond to them when we meet in due course.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-01
Topic: Housing
Natalie Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): I believe that the noble Lord is correct about legal aid, but I hope he will permit me to go back and confirm that. In response to the question on what happens when some payment of rent is made, the process starts from scratch and all notices will need to be resent. But as I said, I am very happy to meet noble Lords to discuss some of the detail further.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-01
Topic: Housing
Nicholas True (Conservative, Centre-right): I do not dissent from what the noble Baroness said, nor from what the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, said—but, as I read this part of the Bill, it is also designed to address the situation where a bad tenant who does not want to pay their rent disappears and does not want to be found. That is what lies behind my concern about local authorities. If the local authority has to certify that this person has gone—is deliberately not wanting to be found and not answering letters and has actually abandoned the property —it will want to be extremely cautious, particularly if there is a court case potentially pending, or will require very clear regulatory protection before it issues such a certification. So there is a risk if it means that the bad tenant, who is the other side of the question, will not be pursued. These matters clearly need to be discussed and my noble friend on the Front Bench has offered such discussions.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-01
Topic: Housing
Natalie Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate on Part 3 of the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, said that numbers may be small, but these provisions are nevertheless important to good and reputable landlords whose properties are abandoned by tenants who have stopped paying rent. As we have tried to make clear, we want to find a balance between protecting good landlords and good tenants. Presently, when abandonment happens a landlord can go in and change the locks. However, that involves taking a huge risk, since if the tenant has not abandoned the property the landlord could be liable to prosecution for unlawful eviction and be subject to claims for damages in the civil courts. As a result, many landlords do not take the risk and instead take possession proceedings in the county court However, before they are able to commence court action they must bring the tenancy to an end by serving a Section 21 notice giving the tenant two months’ notice, and when they have made the application it can be two or three further months before they get a court order enabling them to repossess the property. In the mean time they receive no rental income for a property which is standing empty, and often will still need to meet their mortgage payments. The landlord will also incur costs in taking court proceedings. As I have said, abandonment may not be a widespread problem but it is estimated that it costs landlords around £5 million a year in legal fees, missed rent and time When a person surrenders a property they contact their landlord and hand in their keys, but in this instance we are talking about when a person abandons a property and disappears and stops paying rent. It is a different situation. That is why we think the provisions in Part 3 provide for a simpler and cheaper method for recovering property where the former tenant has permanently left owing arrears of rent that have continued to accrue since the first warning notice was given I also make clear that any landlord who abuses this process by not giving tenants proper warning and takes repossession of the property knowing that it has not been abandoned will be liable to be prosecuted for unlawful eviction under the Protection from Eviction Act 1977. As we have also tried to make clear, this is not intended as a route to remove a tenant in arrears. This is about abandoned properties. A tenant will also be able to bring a claim for damages through the civil courts where the landlord has not followed the procedure as set out in legislation. The provisions are not a charter for landlords—
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-01
Topic: Housing
Natalie Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): As I have said, we have heard the strength of feeling in the House on this issue and have agreed that we will meet and have a further opportunity to discuss issues. I will attempt also to ensure we have information on hand in that meeting. I reaffirm that these provisions are not a charter for landlords to carry out a do-it-yourself eviction. That is and will remain unlawful. On the basis of the strength of feeling in the House, we welcome the opportunity to discuss further details with noble Lords. On that basis, I ask that these clauses stand part of the Bill.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-01
Topic: Housing
Natalie Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): Obviously, there will be a dialogue between tenant and landlord, and arrangements between the two may be made. As I said earlier, if some payment of rent is made and if a process had been started, it would have to start again from scratch.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-01
Topic: Housing
Natalie Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): There would be a balanced view on this. As I have tried to set out, where payment is being made, that is not abandonment of a property. As I have said to noble Lords, we are happy to discuss this in further detail to, I hope, allay concerns.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-01
Topic: Other
Natalie Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): As I have said, we believe there is a process that has a number of important elements to it. However, we have heard the strength of feeling in the House and look forward to discussing this in due course.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-01
Topic: Housing
Natalie Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, this amendment would insert a new clause into the Bill requiring a review of the effectiveness of empty dwelling management orders and other provisions for bringing into use domestic properties left empty by their owners. We welcome noble Lords’ interest in seeing properties being brought back into use to increase the housing supply, which is certainly an aim that the Government share, but we do not believe that this amendment is necessary because the range of measures we already have in place to tackle the issue of empty homes is working The Government have achieved a year-on-year reduction in long-term empty homes, with the number of homes that stand empty for more than six months now at the lowest level since records began. In London, as highlighted by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, empty homes are at an all-time low of 2%.