Immigration Act 2014 (Commencement No. 6) Order 2016 — House of Lords, 2016-02-24
Topic: Housing
Rachel Trixie Anne Gardner (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, my interest as a small landlord is on the register. Like the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, I have let properties in a small way for a very long time, probably 40 to 50 years, starting with the basement of a house that I lived in. It is unfortunate that this clause comes in an immigration rather than a housing Bill, where so many of these issues are addressed and more is known about the real problems involved A pilot evaluation as proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, is at least desirable and even essential. Like others on this side of the House, I shall not vote in favour of her Motion, but I want to make an input on the subject. Checks on tenants all sound very desirable, and I have always had checks on them, but I cannot tell noble Lords how difficult it is becoming. Nowadays people either want to hide their identity for some illegal reason of their own or they simply do not even know how to produce identification. I have had a very charming and completely reliable girl take a small flat that I had. The previous tenants were expecting a child and needed more space, so they moved out. She wanted to come, but to try to get any suitable identification and proof that she was actually going to the university here that she claimed to be going to took over six weeks. As the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, said, six weeks’ loss of rent to a landlord is quite a lot of money and certainly pushes the rent up for the next person who comes along, because you have to compensate for the money that you have lost in that period. In the end, we had to get a letter from her embassy to prove that she really was legitimate I was quite fussy about this because we had at least six people presenting themselves to take that flat who were definitely not what they said they were and wanted it for illegal purposes. Other flats in the block have been let out on an Airbnb basis; the council used to be able at least to find out who was living in those flats. They were bussing in 10 people at a time for two weeks’ holiday. They came into a one-bedroom flat, which was not allowed to be sublet. In the end, the whole thing was sorted out in terms of those units, but the same people who had successfully run that—the court demanded that they give up that illegal subletting—were putting up front men to ask for my flat so they could do the same thing there. It is so very hard to detect these cases, and it takes a lot of time and consideration When residential landlords are given the responsibility to check immigration things, it will be a bit like the National Health Service. We are meant to check on who is entitled to national health treatment, but people do not have the time or ability to access the information and a tremendous lot of health tourists come here for that reason What are reasonable requirements? I can understand that it would be easy if we had national identity cards, although I have never really been in favour of them. Then, at least we would know whether someone was genuinely in the country, and that would cover one little thing, but that is not enough. For us to have passed the Deregulation Act, taking away the controls on people subletting or letting on short tenancies, at a time when New York and Paris were introducing such regulations was insane, but there is nothing we can do about it The point that this does not address at all is illegal landlords. Legal landlords are doing their best to abide by whatever the law is, but I know so many people who have a room in a house that is divided into six or eight rooms. You are meant to have a certificate if it is a house in multiple occupation and to know who is in it. Instead, these people are let rooms with no rent book or security, with nothing at all. In one case, someone has asked me to help. She is very concerned because someone has a key to her door and comes in and steals her things, yet she is told by the landlord that if she goes to the police, he will put her out instantly. That sounds unbelievable, but it is absolutely true. There will be at least six people living in a house where the landlord does not declare that he has anyone. I do not think he pays any income tax or anything else. The more we put greater and greater demands on legitimate landlords which are almost impossible to satisfy, the more we are going to push the enterprise underground. That is a very undesirable situation, and we do not want to see it I understand that the question of discrimination might be why this provision has been put into the Immigration Bill, but I am not involved in that Bill and I had not realised that it had housing implications. I am very impressed by the work being done by a lot of people, such as the noble Lord, Lord Best, who is a real expert on this matter. The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, said that there should be no further action before there has been a full consultation and evaluation, and the Liberal Members said the same thing It must be remembered that this is making it a criminal offence for landlords. It is not turning it into some light-hearted thing that will be dismissed. They say that you will be able to ring a helpline but, from my national health experience, I do not have a huge amount of faith in helplines. Every day in the paper there is a story about something that has gone wrong with a helpline. Why do we think a helpline would be any better manned or more efficient in this field than in other fields? Human nature is able to copewith only a certain amount, and most people staffing helplines have a list of questions and answers beside them. If you do not fit into that pattern, they might not be able to give you the appropriate answer because the question is not one that they have been given an answer to The Government need to make the situation much clearer to landlords. I think it is true that people have not had any notice about this—I certainly have not. The same applied over carbon monoxide monitors; the measure was introduced with two weeks’ notice and no one was told anything about it. It is no good asking people to follow a law without them having any idea that it is coming in. It is only through the National Landlords Association that I have come about this knowledge at all This is an important issue. I feel that it could go disastrously wrong, and it would be far better for it to be fully evaluated and dealt with perhaps in the housing Bill rather than in the Immigration Bill.