Clause 1. — (Regulated Tenancies.)

Part of Orders of the Day — Rent Bill – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 29 June 1965.

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Photo of Mr John Boyd-Carpenter Mr John Boyd-Carpenter , Kingston upon Thames 12:00, 29 June 1965

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeenshire, West (Mr. Hendry) that the Parliamentary Secretary's reply was really quite extraordinary. The hon. Gentleman himself gave substantial support to the proposition put forward in this Amendment. He said that the Prevention from Eviction Act was successful and was working well. He went on to say that if there were the gap between the Bill becoming law and its operation which would result from this Amendment, there would be anarchy.

I take his point that the Prevention from Eviction Act expires at the end of this year, but if he or the Minister thinks that this gap would run into next year it would be perfectly simple to make a one-Clause addition to the Bill to extend the Prevention from Eviction Act to whatever period was thought necessary or, alternatively, to take powers to extend it by Order for such periods as might be required. That might be yet another item of work for another place to add to those items that have already been suggested in this Chamber this afternoon—or rather, this morning.

The Parliamentary Secretary really answered himself. There need be no anarchy if this were done. Therefore, the real purpose seems to be that when this gap appears it shall have the effect of completely freezing rents, and the longer the right hon. Gentleman is in carrying through his highly ambitious scheme the longer will rents be frozen without any possibility of the landlord concerned obtaining any increase. There will not be a freeze in repair and maintenance costs; all there will be will be a freeze of rents right up the scale. That seems to me to be a wholly unreasonable proposition. I do not know whether it is intended—I rather think that it probably is—but if that were intended it would be more appropriate for the Parliamentary Secretary to avow it.

The right hon. Gentleman is taking on an enormous task. As the leading article in what is now yesterday's edition of The Times makes clear, he is proposing to set up an elaborate system throughout the country. He will have to recruit for it not only rent officers to cover the whole of the country, but members, whom he admits will have to be highly qualified, of the rent assessment committees. We are now towards the end of the month of June. The Bill is not yet law. Nobody knows when—if it does so—it will become law. But the right hon. Gentleman has told us nothing of any success that he has had in any preliminary arrangements, in any recruiting effort, to obtain the necessary people to man this elaborate nation-wide administrative machine.

The right hon. Gentleman told us on an earlier Amendment of his intention to set up this machinery first in the great conurbations. No doubt, from many points of view, that is right, but it means that this rent freeze will be carried on longest in the areas where, as has been stated, the justification is least—In the remotest parts of the country.

Here, once again, we are up against the mess into which the right hon. Gentleman has got himself because of his insistence on a universal system for the Bill, a system applied throughout the country and up to very high rateable values. By insisting on that he has taken on himself an administrative task that many people, not unfriendly to him, think is doomed to failure and likely to be unworkable. He is now adding to that task the further difficulty that the delay inescapable in dealing with so large an administrative operation is certain to cause a gap after the Bill is law, and a gap the effect of which will be to freeze rents and virtually nothing else by not extending the Protection from Eviction Act.

That, we have been told by the Parliamentary Secretary, has been a success. We are left, therefore, with a position that is wholly unsatisfactory, but we have at least gained one thing from the discussion of this Amendment—a clearer view of what the right hon. Gentleman's intentions really are. As long as he gets the rent freeze he is not worrying very much about the subsequent steps.

The right hon. Gentleman has not been able to assure us when these steps will be taken. He has not been able to give us any dates when he can guarantee that the rent officer or the rent assessment committee will be there. The Parliamentary Secretary muttered a few optimistic hopes that it would not be long, but even he did not give us any firm date. Even if he could not do that, he could surely have given us a period from the date of Royal Assent if real preparations had been made. It is only really effective preparations that could justify the right hon. Gentleman and the Parliamentary Secretary taking the attitude they have taken.

The fact that we are discussing this very important matter shortly before dawn, and I think I am right, at this time of the year, in that assertion, means that perhaps people outside may not become as well aware of what the right hon. Gentleman is doing as they should be. We will do our best outside to remedy this. Meanwhile, we have at least elicited that the right hon. Gentleman's intentions towards landlords are consistent with his avowed hostility to them.