Chamber and committees

Can the member point to who, in any of our debates on or scrutiny of the bill, has said what he has just accused people of saying? Will he recognise that the Government’s consistent position is to recognise that not all landlords are in the same financial circumstances and that it is the minority of landlords who behave in abusive or exploitative ways?

As Miles Briggs set out, amendment 93 would place a requirement on ministers to ensure that adequate resources are available for the First-tier Tribunal should the provisions in part 1 result in a significant increase in the number of cases being heard.

I do not believe that the amendment is necessary. Where a change is made to a case type in the housing and property chamber of the First-tier Tribunal, the Scottish Government fully funds the cost by in-year transfer based on a spending forecast that is agreed between the Scottish Government and the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service. Once the case load has reached a settled state, a baseline transfer of costs is agreed. That is a standard approach that is taken across all First-tier Tribunal chambers. Private rented sector case costs have not yet been baselined. We expect to meet the SCTS shortly to agree a transfer of costs for the remainder of this financial year—including those that result from the legislation via the spring budget revision. That process is adequate to meet the needs of the tribunal, and I do not believe that amendment 93 is necessary, so I urge Mr Briggs to withdraw it.

I am afraid that I will not accept any of the amendments in this group. If members press them, I will ask Parliament to vote against them.

Amendments 51 and 60 seek to make the eviction ground for “substantial rent arrears” subject to the eviction ground of the landlord’s

“intent to live in house to alleviate financial hardship”.

The amendments appear to allow that the landlord could evict a tenant for “substantial rent arrears” only if the former also intended to live in the property. Given that the “intent to live” ground is already a stand-alone provision that can provide the basis for evictions anyway, the effect of the amendments is to make the ground for “substantial rent arrears” redundant in most cases and applicable only in those cases in which the landlord intends to occupy the property. Such a provision would significantly reduce the impact of the package of safeguards, which we have said is balanced with regard to respecting the rights and interests of both tenants and landlords. The amendments would interfere with that balance in a way that would give rise to a significant risk of challenge.

Amendments 53, 57 and 63 seek to place an obligation—presumably on the landlord—to

“ensure that the tenant is informed of all support available, including that the tenant has exhausted applications for any local authority financial support to which the tenant is entitled.”

I am sure that it is not the intention behind the amendments to do so, but we believe that they would inappropriately require the landlord to make potentially intrusive inquiries into the financial affairs of a tenant, when many tenants might not want to share that information with their landlord.

The tribunal already has discretion to explore whether the tenant has attempted to seek support and whether they have complied with procedures in circumstances that require a pre-action protocol. We believe that the intention behind the amendments is not necessary and we urge the member not to move them.

In relation to a landlord’s intent to live in the let property, amendments 59 and 69 seek to tie the link between a landlord’s “financial hardship” and the tenant’s being in “substantial rent arrears”. Those grounds are separate, because it is acknowledged that the cost of living crisis impacts not only on tenants but on landlords, regardless of whether their tenant is paying rent.

If a landlord lost their residence due to financial hardship, we think it reasonable that they should be able to occupy a rental property that they own. In each individual case, the tribunal would determine whether eviction was reasonable in those circumstances. Again, I ask the member not to move those amendments, and Parliament to vote against them if they are moved.

As for amendments 70 and 62—which I think is consequential on amendment 70—we have considered carefully what the appropriate level of arrears should be.

We have concluded that six months’ worth of rent is the appropriate level. A reduced threshold for triggering that eviction ground might see tenants being at risk of eviction after a relatively short and temporary period of financial difficulty.

We do not believe that the amendment should be supported, and it is worth reflecting that some members in the debate have argued that a level of six months of rent arrears is setting the bar too low, while others have suggested that it is setting the bar too high. We come back to the issue of balance: we need to ensure that we have a balanced package. We believe that the bill represents that, so I cannot support the amendments in this group. I urge members not to press them, and to vote against them if they are pressed.

What you mean by the rent freeze period is a matter of interpretation. Under the previous legislation, a rent increase notice is the mechanism by which a landlord increases the rent. That action cannot take place inconsistent with the cap from 6 September onwards until or unless the cap is removed or changed.

The legislation has been exactly as successful as I thought it would be. When it was introduced, I welcomed the fact that something was being tried, but I was sceptical whether rent pressure zones would be enough to solve the problem.

There is a lack of data available to local authorities. We know that none of them has taken forward such a zone; the reason is that local authorities do not have the data to justify it, and they could be exposed to the threat of legal challenge if somebody argued that a zone was a disproportionate interference in landlords’ rights. As we develop our longer-term proposals for reforming the rented sector, including a national system of rent controls, we need to fill in the data gaps that exist.

If rent pressure zones had been put into practice and we had seen them work, we might be in a very different position. In my view, the bill that provided for RPZs was unlikely to be successful. RPZs were unlikely to be put into practice and therefore unlikely to reduce anyone’s rent, and that is what has come to pass.

We are now in a situation where, as I have said, some landlords are being very responsible and have tried to protect tenants from rent increases, whether during the cost of living crisis or the years of the pandemic. However—and I am sure that members from across the country are aware of this—others are imposing eye-watering rent increases. I will be far from the only Glasgow MSP who has heard from tenants who are seeing 20, 30 or 40 per cent increases, which are simply unmanageable, unaffordable and unsustainable and will not take place under this legislation.

The rent freeze measures do apply to end-of-tenancy rent increases. The central reason is that we already have that mechanism. Tenants have a right to challenge unreasonable rent increases during their tenancy and there is a requirement for increases to happen only once a year in the private rented sector and with three months’ notice. It is clear that we have the ability to intervene in a short period of time in response to the current emergency.

There is, of course, a longer-term argument, much of which was explored in the consultation on the new deal for tenants. The Government will address those questions in its longer-term legislative work on the private rented sector.

In many ways, that suggestion is slightly akin to the idea that all landlords will take the most exploitative or opportunistic approach. I do not think that that is true. The majority of landlords will obey the law and will not try to get around it and the majority of tenants will meet their responsibilities.

There is a concern that a minority of tenants might be tempted to stop paying their rent altogether, even when they can afford it. That is one reason why we thought long and hard about the exemptions from the eviction moratorium and decided, on balance, that there was a requirement to include severe rent arrears as a ground for exemption from that moratorium.

In my view, which we will discuss at length in the chamber this afternoon, tenants with rent arrears need support that is different to the interventions in the rest of the system. As the witness from Crisis said, they need direct support. Through the discretionary housing payments and the tenant grant fund, we have increased not only the amount of support that is available directly for tenants who are facing rent arrears, but the flexibility in the way that it can be offered. We will continue to look at how that might be developed further.

However, I think that the inclusion of the exemption from the moratorium will give landlords some confidence that there will not be that incentive for people to simply stop paying rent altogether. As I said, only a minority of people would ever be tempted to do that, but there will be no incentive. I think that I remember hearing John Blackwood welcome that measure as well.

I recognise that point, which has been made by some people who responded to the consultation on the new deal for tenants. If we were to try to incorporate that into the emergency legislation, we would be here a lot longer and would not have the emergency legislation in time to protect people. Some of these arguments will have to be built into the review of the existing grounds for repossession, the permanent legislation and our consideration of how we might alter that. However, your point is well made and the issue is certainly on our radar.

We will certainly keep the committee informed on timescales. If the updated research has not yet been made available, we will ensure that it is.

I think that we should all be concerned about the impact of housing policy and legislation on the housing sector and the housing systems that exist in our society. We should be concerned about provision and quality, and about people’s rights and the experience that they have as tenants. One of the longer-term goals of the Government is to close the gap in outcomes between the social and private rented sectors, because we regard adequate housing as a human right. That is the goal that we have.

Over the long term, in the past, there has been an increase in regulation in the private rented sector, which has gone alongside a substantial increase in the size of the private rented sector. The member mentioned some countries, but perhaps we can all choose the comparisons that we make selectively. There are other European countries with a higher level of regulation and long-standing systems of rent controls that have an even bigger private rented sector than Scotland. Therefore, it can be done properly and responsibly, making sure that we raise standards and that there is protection for tenants and tenants’ rights at the same time as making sure that our housing systems have an adequate supply of good-quality stock.