I beg to move amendment 195, in clause 43, page 48, line 32, at end insert—

“(f) tenants and prospective tenants of a relevant property and all other properties linked to the unique identifier of the landlord with whom they are proposing to or have signed a tenancy agreement.”

This amendment would ensure that tenants and prospective tenants have access to information held in the database relating to the landlord of the relevant property.

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Clause stand part.

Clauses 44 and 45 stand part.

The Bill contains a list of organisations and agencies that will have access to the portal. Tenants are not included in that list. I hope that that is because they have access through some other means, or that the Minister will stand up and say, “Don’t worry, you’ve missed it—it’s in x, y and z.” But my reading is that there is no presumption that tenants and presumptive tenants will have full access to all the information about the house they are moving into and its landlord.

We have heard in evidence that it is important that tenants have the information before they sign a contract. Any effective free market has to be based on the knowledge of the person who is making a choice to purchase something. The tenant is clearly one such person, so the tenant needs to know the background of the person and the quality of the house before they sign.

It might be that the Government plan for such information to be public—that would mitigate the need for the amendment—but I worry that some information will be public and some redacted, particularly information on house prices, former house prices and rental prices. That kind of information should be made available to the tenant. Tenants and prospective tenants should have full, unredacted information about the house and the landlord of the property that they are in or want to be in. I seek reassurances from the Minister on the matter.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his amendment, which relates to the publicly available information on the property portal. One of our core objectives is to enhance the information available to tenants so that they can make more informed choices and have a better renting experience. As I have said, we are carefully considering what information will be available to tenants via the portal, but it is likely to include information about property standards. We also intend to publish information about certain relevant offences committed by landlords. As I have set out, we believe that outlining what information is available to tenants through regulations will allow us to respond to changes in the market and to remain sensitive to landlords’ privacy rights. We have the power to amend what information is accessible by tenants in the future if doing so would benefit the operation of the sector.

The Minister is talking about what he expects will be available to tenants. Could he outline what he expects might not be available to tenants, so that I can understand his thinking on the other side?

Specifically on the question of a landlord’s privacy, there will be some information that is relevant for a local authority to know about a landlord but not necessarily relevant for a tenant to know about a landlord. As I say, such things are best set out in regulations.

Can the Minister give examples of what that information would be? That would help to flesh out what we are talking about.

I am not in a position to give an example today. If an example comes to mind, I shall write to the hon. Gentleman with it.

I just want to press the Minister on this point. It is right that there is an issue about balance, but by asking the Committee to accept that the detail will be brought forward in regulations—without our having any idea of where the balance might lie and what kind of exceptions we are talking about—the Minister is asking us to approve the clause rather in the dark.

I reject the suggestion that the Committee is being asked to approve the clause in the dark. Obviously, any regulations will come before the House will be debated at that time. These things could breach someone’s human rights or affect their ability to protect their own data, therefore it is right that we properly consider them once we know what the portal actually looks like, and we have information recorded on it and so on.

I encourage the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown to withdraw his amendment. A landlord’s national insurance number or date of birth, for example, is key information that should remain private to a landlord and is not necessarily for tenants’ viewing. I respect the hon. Member’s points and the issues that he raised; as I say, we will consider them fully when we come to make regulations after Royal Assent.

It might be understandable if, for example, the landlord’s day of birth was redacted on Companies House but the month and year were shown. If we had no national insurance numbers, but we had a contactable address where that person could be found—not necessarily their home address, but a non-PO box address—that might, again, be acceptable.

The Government need to be clear in their intention that this is about privacy grounds only where necessary for the safety and functioning of a landlord, and not about withholding information that would be useful for the tenant in reaching out to the landlord. I will withdraw the amendment, but I expect the Minister to provide some more details in writing about what will be excluded.

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 43 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 44 to 46 ordered to stand part of the Bill.