CLAUSE 4.—(Prevention of excessive charges for sublet parts of dwelling-houses.) (Hansard, 6 April 1933)

§ Sir B. PETO
I beg to move, in page 5, line 37, to leave out the word "may," and to insert instead thereof the word "shall."
This Clause deals with one specific question alone, and that is the question of excessive charges for sub-letting a part of a dwelling-house, and it appears to be here if anywhere in the Bill that you are dealing with something which is a question of fact. Therefore, I cannot see why the Clause should be worded so that an order for ejectment of a tenant may be made in those circumstances rather than that the order shall be made 2058 if the tenant is found to be sub-letting part of the dwelling at a rent which is in excess of the recoverable rent for that part.

§ The SOLICITOR-GENERAL
I am afraid that it is impossible to accept this Amendment. It is another instance of abolishing the discretion of the Court. Let me point out to the hon. Baronet that we are here giving an additional ground on which a landlord can obtain possession. If a tenant is profiteering in sub-letting that is to be a ground for the landlord obtaining possession, but it is conceivable that this profiteering may not be culpable. It is conceivable that more than the recoverable rent may be charged in a case when it is only found out for the first time in the proceedings. It seems to me impossible to deprive the Court of their overriding discretion to give possession to the landlord. If we accept the Amendment, it would be imperative on the court, once it is shown that a fraction more than the recoverable rent has been charged on a, subletting, though it is only discovered for the first time in those proceedings, to order possession. That would be flying in the face of the policy which has run through the Rent Acts of giving the court all the time an overriding discretion to enforce a particular provision.

§ Sir B. PETO
On the learned Solicitor-General's argument it is therefore clear that the owner of property, where he proves that the tenant is sub-letting at profiteering rents, has not the absolute right for the recovery of possession. I am under the impression that that was the object of Clause 4, that is, to do something certain and to prevent what is one of the scandals of the Rent Restrictions Acts, which is that there are sitting tenants all over the country profiteering by sub-letting and keeping the owners of the property from getting possession of their houses for their own occupation. In view of what the Solicitor-General said, however, it would be idle for me to press the matter and I must ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

§ Sir B. PETO
I beg to move, in page 5, line 41, at the end, to insert the words: 2059 or that the total rent of the portions sublet exceeds the controlled rent paid by the tenant to the landlord. The Minister will see that this Amendment has substance, and I hope sufficient to enable him to accept it. The principle of the Clause is that if a tenant sub-lets any portion, at an excessive rent, it may be a ground on which the landlord can recover possession. The case has been brought to my notice where a tenant has got possession of a controlled house and is sub-letting various parts of it at rents which in the aggregate mean that the tenant is sitting there and paying nothing to the owner of the house in rent at all, because he is collecting more from the sub-tenants than he is paying in rent. A much more pertinent reason for giving the landlord possession of the house is found in the case which I envisage in the Amendment, where the total rent of the portions sub-let exceeds the controlled rent paid by the tenant to the landlord. I do not think the Minister wishes to protect and to keep in a controlled house a tenant who is not living there because he cannot find anything cheaper but because he is drawing more in rents from his sub-tenants than he is paying to the owner of the house.
I can give an example from my own constituency of a man who bought a house for £400, his life savings, but is unable to get possession of it, and finds his tenant taking in so many lodgers that he is able to live there rent free while he, the owner, has to work very hard to find the money necessary to keep the house in proper repair. I have also been given particulars of another case in which the aggregate rents from all the sub-lettings amount to nearly double the controlled rent. Therefore, if it is reasonable to put in this Clause to deal with sub-letting at an extortionate rent, it is even more reasonable to say that the landlord shall be able to get possession of the house where the tenant is really using the house in order to gain a means of livelihood by sub-letting at rents which in the aggregate exceed the rent he is himself paying.

§ Mr. SHAKESPEARE
I am afraid I cannot accept this Amendment, attractive as it sounds when proposed by the hon. Baronet. I cannot help thinking that the case which he is putting is rather a rare 2060 one. The object of the Clause is to prevent a tenant from profiteering by charging excessive rents when sub-letting, and the hon. Baronet wants to allow the landlord to regain possession not only if the tenant is profiteering, that is, charging an excess rent for rooms, but if the aggregate of the rents he is charging exceeds the chief rent. It may happen that a tenant who before the War rented a bigger house than he required may be sub-letting parts of it to-day at rents which in the aggregate may exceed the chief rent. He sub-let in days when the market price had risen and in such circumstances he can hardly be said to be doing anything illegal. We cannot accept the Amendment.

§ Mr. CAPORN
It seems to me that the policy of the Rent Acts is to give statutory protection to a man in possession of something, that is, a house, which he requires for his own use and is unable to obtain similar accommodation at a reasonable rent. The true policy should be that all sub-letting should cease and that all sub-tenants should automatically become the tenants of the head landlords. If that was provided, you would get rid of the whole difficulty as regards profiteering, and you would relieve the head landlords of great injustice. I hope that the Minister of Health will consider at some time whether that would not be a better policy.

§ Sir B. PETO
I appeal to the Minister to give this matter further consideration. The whole purpose of rent restriction legislation and particularly of this amending Bill is to give a tenant protection at the place where he wants it, the dwelling-house of his own occupation. Surely the Minister does not want to give a tenant the right of making a living out of a house which belongs to somebody else who wants the house for occupation of self and family. To say that the man who owns a house has no right to occupy it and to let off a part that he does not want, and that the tenant who happens to be the sitting tenant has the right to remain there and to use this profitable piece of property which does not belong to him, is an unjust business and one which, I know, is causing very grave injustice in many cases. I must ask the Minister, if he cannot accept my Amend- 2061 ment in this form, which would protect all landlords, whether they own many houses or not, at least to give the right to the man who owns only one house, and to say that, if there is to be any profit out of letting any rooms in it, it is the man who owns the house who should make the profit, and not the tenant. That is the principle I want to see embodied, and I would ask the Minister to give that point consideration before the Report stage.

Sir H. YOUNG
My own view is that the matter is exactly as it was stated by the Parliamentary Secretary and that the cases referred to by the hon. Baronet are in fact covered by the provisions of the Act to give the landlord protection. At the same time, I should be happy to give consideration to the cases which have been quoted to the Committee, between now and the Report stage.

§ Mr. C. WILLIAMS
These cases are not uncommon cases; they are very common indeed and I do not think that the Parliamentary Secretary when he made the statement was quite correct. It is likely to apply to a vast number of cases of people who buy a house before they retire in order to let it when they have retired. I believe you can cover a large number of cases of that sort, and I ask the Minister to consider this point in all its aspects.

§ Miss RATHBONE
I am the last person to wish to prevent profiteering in sub-letting, but I think the suggestion which has been made goes a little too far. There is a considerable number of cases where a tenant takes a large house, occupies a portion of it and lets the remainder in a perfectly legitimate way, and performs a public service by enabling a house which is too large for present needs to be split up among a number of tenants. The resident tenant in that case performs a certain service, and incurs a certain amount of trouble and risk. We want, of course, to stop profiteering, but anything that would stamp out the taking of houses by tenants for the purpose of making an honest living by subletting would work very unfairly against many people who have done this for a long time and have behaved quite fairly.

§ Mr. D. GRAHAM
Apparently the hon. Baronet is only opposed to profiteering when it is done by the tenant. He is thinking of the interest of the landlord. The cure for this difficulty is to provide sufficient houses. If that were done there would be no need for subletting, and we should get rid of the question of profiteering, whether on the part of the tenant or of the landlord. That there has been profiteering we agree, but the tenant is not always to blame; there is something to be said on both sides. The remedy for the evil is a sufficient supply of houses.