While I respect the views of Sir Robert Neill, who raised some valid points about the county court system and the pressures on it, as someone representing a large number of private renters, I must nevertheless express my concerns and share those raised by the shadow Minister and others about the Government’s failure to deliver on their promise on no-fault evictions. I rise, as chair of the all-party parliamentary group for students, to comment specifically on the proposals in relation to students, to support new clause 41, tabled by my hon. Friend Alex Sobel, and to speak to amendment 260, which stands in my name.

Students form a substantial part of the private rented sector. Back in July, the all-party parliamentary group organised a meeting to ensure that their views were heard. We brought together people from different nations of the UK and from all parts of the country. The Minister—sadly, he is not currently in his place—would have found it useful, because it highlighted a number of issues in the Bill that have not been properly thought through. I have discussed with the Minister the issues that came out of our meeting, and I am grateful to him for having found that time, but I want to share some reflections at this point in the Bill’s progress.

First, on the decision to extend grounds for eviction from purpose-built student accommodation to houses in multiple occupation and potentially to other student renters, there are mixed views across the country. Some are worried that exempting students makes them more attractive to less scrupulous landlords as potentially second-class, less protected tenants. Others, though, were concerned that giving students the same protection as other renters would force landlords to leave the student market, with that point made by landlords in areas where there was significant pressure on the housing market. Overall, we reached the same view as the Select Committee: on balance, the exemption is probably right, but it needs to be kept under review.

There is, however, a wider problem with the whole approach to students in the Bill. It seems that the Government have approached students with a one-size-fits-all model: they are undergraduates aged 18 to 21, living away from the parental home from the first time, and living there during term time only. However, students at our meeting were at pains to point out that they are not a homogeneous group. There are mature students who are renting in their home city and need to be there all the time, and students with families. Many courses do not start in September and are not on the cycle on which the Government’s amendments are premised. There are postgraduate taught programmes on a different, longer cycle. There are postgraduate research students on full-time programmes over several years, who are like any young professional. There are mixed households of students and non-students, particularly where groups of friends form and perhaps one member graduates.

I discussed all those variations with the Minister— I am glad to see him back in the Chamber—and his view was that any atypical student would simply not be subject to the exemption, partly because these issues have not been thought through properly. That might be in their favour because they will have greater protection, or it might leave them out in the cold because landlords will find them less attractive within the student market. Again, that emphasises the need to keep the impact of the student proposals under close review.

As the Minister resumes his seat I will move to my amendment 260, which raises a further issue that he referred to: the cycle of student tenancies, which I have discussed with him and on which he was sympathetic. When some of us were students, undergraduates would start university in September, settle in and make friendship groups, and towards the end of the academic year, after Easter, they would start looking for accommodation for the subsequent year. We have seen a landlord-driven arms race, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West referred to it, in which they have pressured students ever earlier in the year to enter into contracts for the subsequent academic year.

It is now the norm in many parts of the country that students starting a course in September are put under pressure by landlords the following month to enter into a contract for the following year. That forces them to pay a substantial deposit at a point in their life when they already have significant additional costs. It also forces them into joint tenancies with groups of people who they might discover later in the year are probably not who they want to live with in the subsequent year. Appeals to landlords to step out of the contract into which they entered are invariably rejected.

As the Government’s proposals are to regulate on the basis of that tenancy cycle, my proposition is that we try to make that cycle work better by saying that designated student contracts should not start sooner than March of the year in which students will take occupation in September. That would be in the interests of tenants, for the reasons that all of us who represent students will know. Setting a defined starting point will also end the arms race, in the interests of landlords.