“(1) The Lord Chancellor must prepare an assessment of the operation of the process by which—

(a) on applications made by landlords, the county court is able to make orders for the possession of dwellings in England that are let under assured and regulated tenancies, and

(b) such orders are enforced.

(2) The Lord Chancellor must publish the assessment at such time, and in such manner, as the Lord Chancellor thinks appropriate.

(3) In this section—

‘assured tenancy’ means an assured tenancy within the meaning of the 1988 Act;

‘dwelling’ means a building or part of a building which is occupied or intended to be occupied as a separate dwelling;

‘regulated tenancy’ means a regulated tenancy within the meaning of the Rent Act 1977.”—

Brought up, and read the First time.

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

At risk of rehearsing the debate we have already had, the new clause seeks to address the assessment of the possessions process. In evidence to the Committee a degree of concern was expressed on the part of landlords that the backlog in the courts may make it difficult to secure possession when that is necessary. Governments of all parties, including the previous Government, have put in place measures seeking to address that. We know that they are beginning to bear fruit, but it is important in maintaining the confidence of landlords both to come to the market and to remain in the market that they know it is possible to secure a court hearing, should one be necessary to gain access to the property. The new clause seeks to ensure that an assessment of that process is carried out.

New clause 4 would require the Lord Chancellor to prepare an assessment of the operation of the process by which the county court is able to make possession orders for rented properties and by which such orders are enforced. The assessment would be published at such time and in such a manner as the Lord Chancellor saw fit.

Hon. Members who followed the debates in the last Parliament will recall that the previous Government introduced a similar clause to their own Renters (Reform) Bill in the late stages of that Bill’s progress, via a Government amendment, together with a clause that prevented the Secretary of State from laying regulations to bring tenancy reforms into force for existing tenancies until after the Lord Chancellor’s amendment had been published. This Government have been clear that we will not follow a similar approach. We do not consider it reasonable that the implementation of our reforms should be constrained by such an assessment, not least an assessment of the kind proposed in the new clause, which is extremely broad and undefined.

The hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner tabled amendment 64, which would delay commencement until the Lord Chancellor has carried out and published the proposed assessment. I reaffirm that we have no intention of delaying these urgent and necessary reforms while awaiting an unnecessary assessment of the possession process against what is an unspecific metric. We will instead move ahead with tenancy reform as quickly as possible, but in conjunction with an extensive parallel workstream with colleagues from the Ministry of Justice and His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service to ensure that the courts are ready at the point of implementation.

In any case, the assessment required by new clause 4 is entirely unnecessary and unhelpful, because data on the operation of possession proceedings for rented properties is already published by the Ministry of Justice on a quarterly basis, and will continue to be. Court rules specify that possession claims requiring a hearing should be listed between four weeks and eight weeks of receipt.

The Committee may be interested to know that figures for April to June 2024 show that claim to order median timeliness is 8.1 weeks, suggesting that—I am not necessarily attributing this to the shadow Minister—some of the more alarmist statements about the readiness of the county court system may have more to do with fundamental opposition to the abolition of section 21 and the current tenancy regime than they are an impartial assessment of court performance.

The proposed assessment would provide no obvious additional insight or benefit to any interested parties, in our view, and would merely detract from the vital work of the courts and tribunals by subjecting them to a nugatory additional process. All our focus is on ensuring that HMCTS is ready to stand up the new system at the point of commencement, and that should be our focus in the coming weeks and months. On that basis, I kindly ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw his new clause.

It is pleasing to hear from the Minister that the performance of the courts in this respect was so good under the previous Government. I am aware that one of the challenges has been the construction of a new IT platform to enable the new measures envisaged in the Bill to operate efficiently. This might be a legitimate concern for landlords to express, especially given that although the overall performance was good, there have been regional variations that have given rise to concern. However, bearing in mind what the Minister has said and the fact that there would be a degree of transparency about the data, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the clause.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.