HC Deb 08 July 1954 vol 529 cc2462-7

Lords Amendment: In page 21, line 25, leave out "annul the certificate and thereupon" and insert: order that the certificate shall cease to be in force. (3) Where an order is made under the last foregoing subsection as respects a certificate

Mr. H. Macmillan

I beg to move, "That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment."

This Amendment and the next one are linked together. They were made to meet a point which was raised by Lord Silkin in another place. It was suggested that landlords might unduly delay the institution of proceedings for the recovery of arrears of repairs increase held by a tenant on the strength of a certificate of disrepair which the landlord considered to have been incorrectly granted; the validity of which, therefore, he proposes to test by proceeding against the tenant for recovery. I should have thought that if there was an undue delay that might act harshly upon the tenant, and this Amendment, suggested by the noble Lord and accepted by the Government, and the next one, give power to the court, if they are satisfied that the landlord has been dilatory in instituting proceedings, to make the proper consequential reduction in the arrears to be collected.

Mr. Blenkinsop

While we are prepared to accept this Amendment, we have always felt, in Committee and in another place, that it was quite monstrous, after a local authority had issued a certificate of disrepair on which the tenant could feel that he could rely, for the landlord to be able to go to the courts and get it set aside, so that, in fact, the tenant would have no security by getting a certificate.

Although this Amendment to a very slight extent mitigates the hardship in the sense that it relieves the tenant from having to pay back a great mass of arrears due to the dilatory action of the landlord, it in no way deals with the major point which we raised in Committee, and about which we still feel very deeply, and which more and more local authorities are coming to realise means that none of their certificates which they may or may not issue has any certainty of action at all. Therefore, while we are willing to accept the Amendment, we realise that it in no way meets the points which we have raised.

Mr. James MacColl (Widnes)

These proceedings draw one's attention to the fact that there is a happy land far, far away where there is no Guillotine. This matter, which is the subject of this Amendment, was never discussed in Committee or on Report because it was not reached owing to the falling of the Guillotine. It is a very important question and one which, I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, East (Mr. Blenkinsop), goes to the root of the whole of this procedure, and one which will create a shocking feeling of uncertainty not only among tenants but among local authorities and officials who have no means of telling whether or not their certificates will be regarded as valid.

There is the additional, and what seems to me monstrous, corollary, that the proceedings under which these certificates are to be determined take the form of proceedings against the tenant for rent, and presumably in any such proceedings the tenant will be the defendant, who, if he loses the action in the county court, will be liable to pay the costs of the action. We have the incredible position of a public authority sending its official, who has nothing to do with the tenant or landlord, to arbitrate on this question, to interpret the law and to make a decision quite impartially on the matter. If he happens to be a bad sanitary inspector, or happens to meet a county court judge who takes a different view about the vague definition of repairs in the Bill, the wretched tenant is to be penalised and may have to pay the costs of the proceedings. It is difficult to imagine anything more outrageous on the tenant.

One point rather worries me. The next Amendment, in line 26, says that the court may, if it appears just so to do by reason of undue delay by the landlord in bringing the proceedings… Does that include the landlord and his predecessor in title?

What is likely to happen will be something like this. The certificate of disrepair is produced to the landlord and he accepts it. He may think that it is inherently just or he may not want to bother about it further. He accepts it, and on the basis of that certificate the rent increase is deducted. At some subsequent date the landlord sells the property or assigns it to another landlord, who is rather more expert in the devious routes of getting round the Rent Restrictions Acts.

That new landlord may say, "Ah, but we can shake this certificate. It is well known that Judge So-and-so cannot stand the sight of sanitary inspector So-and-so. Let us have a good run for our money." This landlord takes the matter into the county court and gets the certificate upset. He would not be in delay—he would have moved on his nefarious business as quickly as he could—but his predecessor would have delayed. Will this delay by the previous landlord be sufficient to protect the tenant, or will the county court be forced to order that the certificate ceased to be in force back to the date when the original application was made to the local authority?

If that happens, there will be a wonderful traffic in buying up houses with certificates of repair in order to get them withdrawn and to get the arrears collected back. Therefore, the very difficulty which the Amendment is designed to meet may still remain. I wish that the right hon. Gentleman would address his mind to this problem.

Mr. Gibson

The Amendment is a considerable improvement from the point of view of tenants, who will be able, as I understand the Clause, if they fail in the county court, to have the certificate dated from some other date than that on which the landlord first served the claim on the tenant. The court will be able to fix it from any date it likes after the date of the first serving of the notice. That is all to the good.

This is what bothers me. There will be a large number of requests for certificates of disrepair all over the country. If my correspondence or the things one hears at the many meetings I have had to attend in connection with the Bill are any guide, there will be a spate of objections by tenants and claims on local authorities for certificates of disrepair. The landlords will be able to take all those tenants to the county court. That in itself would be frightening enough to most ordinary tenants in the back streets of our great cities.

This, surely, is another strong argument for introducing legal aid in county courts. It has always seemed to me that there has been quite unnecessary delay in implementing that part of our law. Unless we can get assistance under the Legal Aid and Advice Act for tenants in county courts—it can only be done by Government action—tenants whose certificates of disrepair are challenged will be in great difficulty, not only in having to meet the cost, but in many cases they will be frightened into ceasing to resist the claims of landlords who, under the Bill, would not strictly be entitled to the advance in rent for which they were claiming. I hope that the Government will take note of this point.

9.15 p.m.

Mr. G. Lindgren (Wellingborough)

The Amendment enables me again to call attention to the whole emphasis of the Bill from start to finish: the privilege for the landlord and the bias against the tenant.

May I deal with the question of the certificate granted when the tenant considers that the property is not in good repair? He can apply to a local authority for a certificate of disrepair. If the sanitary inspector refuses to grant it, that is an end to the matter; the tenant has no court of appeal, there is nowhere he can go to rectify what he may feel to be a wrong decision by the sanitary inspector.

On the other hand, if the tenant takes advantage of his right under the Bill to go to the sanitary inspector for a certificate of disrepair, and the certificate is granted, then immediately, the Minister, being a friend of the landlord, provides the landlord with an opportunity to upset the certificate of disrepair which the local authority has issued. The responsibility for issuing the certificate is that of a public authority, but when it is challenged by the landlord, the responsibility for bearing the cost of court action can fall upon the tenant.

Let no one imagine that county court procedure can be cheap. Property owners are trade unionists in their way; they belong to associations of property owners who brief solicitors and counsel, and the hierarchy within the legal profession means that there have to be corresponding layers of professional assistance on the other side. This means that any tenant who is challenged by a landlord may have to face an expenditure of £20. In giving that figure, I am being modest: I was about to say "conservative," but I should not like anybody to accuse me of that. These proceedings can easily cost the tenant £20.

I ask the Minister bluntly, what right has he to place a possible obligation on the tenant, where the landlord challenges a local authority's certificate, to meet a cost of £20? While the Amendment makes some concession in that the landlord who delays cannot get all the money hack, it is nevertheless monstrous, in my view, that no protection should be given to the tenant from one end of the Bill to the other.

Mr. Sparks

I want to reinforce what has been said by my hon. Friends. Will the right hon. Gentleman consider whether the county court is the place where this matter should be settled? There are other bodies which I should have thought would be competent to make a decision in such a case. It is not essentially a legal question. We have rent tribunals and courts in existence, and I should have thought that the Minister could consider whether it was possible in such cases as this, where the landlord challenges a certificate of disrepair, to take the matter to the rent tribunals. These tribunals are familiar with such problems.

If they were taken to the rent tribunal, the tenant would not be involved in the risk of having to pay costs in the event of the certificate being disallowed. I cannot see why the right hon. Gentleman wants to involve the county court in this matter at all, and I ask him to reconsider it and to see whether it is not possible for these cases to be referred to the rent tribunals.

Further Lords Amendment made: In page 21, line 26, at end insert: Provided that the court may, if it appears just so to do by reason of undue delay by the landlord in bringing the proceedings, order that it shall be deemed to have been in force until such date as may be specified in the order.