Orders of the Day — Protection from Eviction Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 18 November 1964.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Mr Bernard Floud Mr Bernard Floud , Acton 12:00, 18 November 1964

I am glad to have the opportunity of making my maiden speech on a subject which is of such importance to hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions of tenants, and certainly to thousands of tenants in my constituency of Acton.

I naturally wish to ask the indulgence of the House on this occasion and I should like to pay the customary, but nevertheless sincere, tributes to my predecessors. Since the war, Acton has been represented by two Members, by "Joe" Sparks, from 1945 to 1959, and by Philip Holland, from 1959 to 1964. They sat on opposite sides of the House, but they both worked hard for the interests of all their constituents. I hope that I shall deserve as well as them. Indeed, since both in the course of time came to be defeated, I hope that I shall fare rather better.

During the period of about three years when I was the candidate for Acton I found that on many occasions people outside the constituency asked me for which part of Acton I was the candidate. Clearly, people thought that the borough contained within it more than one constituency. I thought that I had left this behind me when I came into the House. I was, therefore, a little dismayed when I was introduced to Mr. Speaker as the Member for Acton, North, and I hope that this does not cast any doubts on my constitutional position. It probably arose from the fact that I was introduced to Mr. Speaker on this occasion immediately following my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Reynolds), who, as a very distinguished son of Acton and a former mayor of the borough, all my constituents are particularly glad to see in the Government.

If there is the feeling, even in this House, that Acton, compact constituency with a rather small electorate, is, never- theless, of such importance that it should have more than one constituency, I can understand it. There are probably two main reasons. The first is that we have, as it seems to me, a multitude of railway stations, 10 railway stations in this small area. When outsiders look at a railway map and read about Acton, Acton Central, Acton Town, Acton North, Acton South, Acton East, Acton West and others besides, it may be difficult for them to realise that all these stations are fitted into a constituency which is less than four square miles in area.

I do not want hon. Members to imagine, and least of all my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport, that I am suggesting that we should have fewer railway stations. I very much hope, and I believe that there are many hon. Members opposite who will agree with me, that in a short time the Minister of Transport will lift the threat which still hangs over the two Acton stations on the Broad Street-Richmond line.

The other reason why some hon. Members and people outside the House may have this misconception about Acton is that it is reckoned that nearly 50,000 people come into Acton every day from outside the borough to earn their living, making the constituency into what is regarded as the most industrialised constituency in the South of England.

But it would not be appropriate for me to spend my time today in talking about Acton's railways, or the enormous number of industries contained within the borough. I want to talk about the people who live in Acton and the conditions under which they live, particularly the housing.

Acton began to grow, roughly, 100 years ago. This means that a large proportion of the houses in the older part of the town were built at the end of the last century and the beginning of this century. Some of these houses were good houses when they were built and some were not. Some became slums long ago, some are becoming slums now. Despite the efforts of Acton Borough Council, which now has about 2,500 families in properties owned by the council, there is still a massive job to be done in the borough.

Nearly a quarter of the households in Acton live in accommodation where they have to share toilet facilities, where there are no baths and no hot-water systems. It is clear that we need in Acton a vast programme of redevelopment and modernisation. I am afraid that on the basis of the evidence of the lack of interest of most private landlords in the possibility of improving their properties by getting improvement grants, it is quite clear that this job of modernisation will be done only if it is done by the local authority. Meanwhile, tenants are living in these sub-standard houses and, of course, in many others besides. In the borough there are about 9,000 families in privately rented unfurnished accommodation and about 3,000 households living in furnished privately rented accommodation.

Here I should like to take up the right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) on the question of who lives in furnished accommodation. It is true that there are many people, single men and single women, who live in such accommodation, but nowadays it is also true that there are substantial numbers of families, husbands and wives and two or three children, who are living in furnished accommodation because they cannot find any kind of unfurnished accommodation. They are paying for two rooms, with meagre articles of furniture, rents up to 9 guineas a week. I am sure that the right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames will agree that these people need protection just as much as those people who are in unfurnished accommodation.

What protection have tenants of furnished premises got as the result of the work of rent tribunals? I think that I am right in saying that the maximum period of security which can be granted by a rent tribunal is three months. Clearly, in present circumstances, in London and the surrounding area, this gives no protection of any value at all. How can a man with a wife and two children risk going to a rent tribunal to get an excessive rent reduced if he knows that the immediate result will be that he will be out of the property and on the street in three months?

Since the Rent Act, of course, many unfurnished houses in my constituency have become decontrolled, and I was greatly struck, during the election and before, not so much by the number of evictions taking place, or, perhaps, by the very high rents being demanded, but by the general feeling of insecurity among thousands of tenants, who, possibly, were tenants of good landlords. It is these people quite as much as those actually dispossessed who live in fear, day and night, that they and their families, through no fault of their own, and even, perhaps, when they are willing to pay a higher rent, may be turned out into the street without any reasonable possibility of finding alternative accommodation. Here lies the great virtue of this Bill. It will go very far not merely to control the activities of bad landlords, but to remove the terrible anxiety and sense of insecurity among so many people of all ages and conditions.

Before turning to certain aspects of the Bill itself, I make two comments on what was said by the right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames. In his opening remarks, he appeared to be a little sad, even a little surprised, that the Government were, in fact, carrying out their election promises. This may be a subject for surprise in some quarters, but we on these benches take pride in the fact, first, that we stated exactly what we should do and, secondly, that so soon after the election we are taking steps to carry it out.

The second point made by the right hon. Gentleman, which was taken up by the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mr. Allason)—whom I am very glad to follow, as he defeated me at the previous election, and I am glad to have caught up with him now—was that this Measure was required to protect tenants from the effect of the Government's announcement in the Gracious Speech about the repeal of the Rent Act. That is not how most tenants will regard the Bill. They will think of it in very different terms, regarding it as a Measure to protect them from the effect of the former Government's Rent Act.

My right hon. Friend the Minister made clear that this is essentially a stopgap Measure and that we shall have much wider legislation very soon. Precisely because it is a stop-gap Measure, I should myself have liked it to be rather simpler and, perhaps, if I may use the word, rather cruder. Even if hon. Members opposite are not aware of it, it is plain that landlords have been trying to get possession of their properties not just during the past three weeks, but for many months. It is obvious that some of these landlords will redouble their efforts now to get possession because they realise that, in a matter of months, we shall have more extensive legislation which will put a stop to such antics. For this reason, I am not wholly happy, and I should like to be reassured by my hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary, about some of the points set out in Clause 2(4).

I recognise that these conditions have appeared in previous housing legislation. I hope that I shall not be regarded as unduly lacking in respect for tradition if I suggest that that in itself is not necessarily a good reason for including them now. I recognise that just as there are bad landlords so there are good landlords, and, equally, as has been made clear, just as there are good tenants there are bad tenants. I realise that, if a tenant is in flagrant breach of the terms of his tenancy, the landlord must have rights against him and must ultimately be able to regain possession of his property. Therefore, I have no fears regarding point (a).

I am not, however, quite so happy about points (b), (c) and (d). How is one to judge, how is any county court judge to decide, whether a tenant has unreasonably refused an offer of a tenancy and whether the offer of that tenancy was for a reasonable term and at a reasonable rent? One has two "reasonables" and one "unreasonable" there, very subjective judgments in each case. What kind of evidence will be accepted to show that the tenant has failed to make reasonable efforts to obtain other suitable accommodation?

On the question of hardship to the landlord, how can one really measure the hardship to him as a result of not getting possession against the hardship to a family of being turned into the street? It has not been unknown for a landlord to advance an extremely good and convincing case for getting possession of his property, in order, perhaps, to accommodate members of his own family, it then being found, in a matter of weeks or months, that the property has been put up for sale.

Whoever takes the decisions on these points, that is, the county court judge, will be making difficult and subjective judgments. What I fear most of all is that it will now pay landlords, when they go to court, to employ the best possible—if that be the right term—legal advice and that the decisions in some cases will turn not so much on the merits of the case as on the skill and ingenuity of the landlords' lawyers, on the one hand, and on the timidity, ignorance and poverty of the tenants, on the other. For this reason, I should have preferred to see a Bill which, in effect, stopped all evictions except in those cases where it could be proved to the court that the tenant had broken the terms of his tenancy.

It could be said that this might be a little hard on landlords, but, as my right hon. Friend said, the balance has, on the whole, been rather tilted in favour of landlords in recent years. We hope that the legislation which will be introduced next year will strike the right balance, but, in the meantime, and given that this is only a stop-gap Measure lasting for a matter of months, perhaps less than six months, I should have thought that it would have been right and proper to do everything possible to give the utmost protection to tenants.

I hope that, when he replies to the debate, my hon. Friend will be able to allay my fears on some of the points which I have raised, because I know already that they are fears in the minds of some tenants and people in my constituency who have the interests of tenants much in mind. I hope that he will also be able to give an indication, as, I think, my right hon. Friend already has, that we are not merely passing a stop-gap Measure, but we are beginning to lay the foundations of a complete new body of legislation which, tying in with comprehensive changes and developments in the whole system of social security, will help to restore and to maintain the sanctity of the home and the happiness of countless families.