New Clause 9
Welfare Reform Bill
Public Bill Committees, 28 November 2006, 12:00 pm
Tim Boswell (Daventry, Conservative)
It is genuinely useful for the Committee to hear about some of that experience. The hon. Lady is entirely on the right lines to suggest that the answer to the problem is to encourage local authorities to get on with the job. Although it is now deeply unfashionable on the Opposition Benches to speak up for landlords, I make the point on their behalf that it is clearly unsatisfactory if they cannot get service of rent. If we were to go along the lines of the new clause tabled by the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey, it would be equally important to ensure that landlords were not disadvantaged. The answer is to get to the root of the problem, whatever we may want to do about the legal shape or form of the sanctions.