HC Deb 19 March 1964 vol 691 cc1821-38

2.48 a.m.

Mr. B. T. Parkin (Paddington, North)

As I shall no doubt later have harsh words to say to the Minister, I should like to start by expressing my warm personal thanks to him for his unfailing courtesy in every debate we have, and for the effort he has made to turn up now and listen to me.

Thirty-six hours ago, I was happy in the thought that there would be great competition to get into yesterday's major debate, that my own small-ranging contribution would take rather longer than would be fair, and that if I was not to be called I could easily raise the matter tonight. But I must say that something in the Minister's speech yesterday made me think, and the more I think it over the more horrified I am. It causes me now to raise this question of intimidation of tenants, a subject on which the right hon. Gentleman said that he had not received sufficient evidence, in a wider perspective.

What the Minister did yesterday was, first of all, to make the Government's not unexpected announcement—one would not expect this Government to "chicken" on its own policy if it brought electoral danger—not to bring in further measures of decontrol. Then in a calm complacent way the right hon. Gentleman announced the calculated re-endorsement of the policy of creeping decontrol, which has been for the ordinary people in central London the biggest disaster that has ever happened to them in housing, a disaster the facts of which I was willing to believe were unknown to the Minister and other hon. Members opposite. During these years we asked hon. and right hon. Members opposite to believe that what we said was true. We were prepared to believe that it resulted from an error of judg- ment and that it was a situation of which rascals took advantage and that the Government ought to take action to stop it. We were prepared to believe that in due course the Government would admit that they had made this error.

But, good gracious, this was announced as the reconsidered and re-endorsed policy of the Government. This is a green light for Rachmanism. This, in the framework of the reaction of the Government in the discussion on Rachmanism last July is permission to go ahead. Because Rachmanism is not about plumbing. It is about intimidation and evictions, and nothing has been done by the Government to deal with either of those things since last July. Furthermore, they have practically said that they are not going to do anything now. This is very serious.

The Minister of Housing and Local Government and Minister for Welsh Affairs (Sir Keith Joseph)

I controlled myself from interrupting the hon. Member before because I hoped that he was going to narrow his argument. Surely the whole basis of the allegations about Rachmanism has been directed to multi-occupied property, and on multi-occupied property, as the hon. Member well knows. the Government have introduced by Part IV of the Housing Bill now going through the House control order procedure allowing authorities powers of summary intervention for the protection of tenants.

The hon. Member is perfectly entitled to claim, if he can show evidence of intimidation outside multi-occupied property, that the Government have taken no new steps but, as he knows, I have taken them. This presumably is the reference he made when he opened with the statement that I have said that I have no evidence on any scale of intimidation outside multi-occupied property.

Mr. Parkin

We still seem to be in disagreement about the way the criticism was put. I shall come to that later. The Minister of course knows, even if the House does not, that a Second Church Estates Commissioner who happened to be in the Chair in the Standing Committee ruled that landlord-tenant relationship was not within the scope of the Housing Bill which was going through that Committee.

Sir K. Joseph

The hon. Member is allowing himself to go very far in linking an outside function of an hon. Member with his rôle as Chairman of a Committee. Chairmen of Committees of the House have to administer the rules of order, whatever those rules of order arc.

Mr. Parkin

An outside function? I think that it is in Vacher. It is a Government appointment. In any case this is not intended to be in any way an indirect attack. This is an hon. Member who is deeply preoccupied with matters of property management, closely associated with and understanding Government policy, and in his position there he had to interpret the rules of order, as the Minister says. But if the rules of order are that in his view that Bill did not embrace the question of landlord-tenant relationship, we are left in the situation that if an Amendment is called on Report it can only hope to strengthen the provisions of the control order. In case that should not come off, I think that I am justified in taking time tonight to raise one or two examples of this kind.

I come back to the point I was making in trying to present a train of thought. I accuse the Minister of having made a statement of Government policy which, in the present framework of the measures envisaged and forecast by the Government, is at fault and inadequate to deal with the problem. I shall go on to explain why.

The Minister was very alert in July in trying to say that this was a local matter, just a question of rascally behaviour by a small group of people which could be easily dealt with. The Government have been very illogical about it because, if that were the case, they should have done something to deal with those particular events. It is still suspicious, to say the least, that the Government have continued to refuse investigations by the Inland Revenue or under the Companies Act into those conspiracies. I could make some very harsh remarks about the Board of Trade in this matter, in the light of detailed technical evidence before it, but it is not my main purpose to chase up a few criminals and it is certainly not my purpose to keep the House up at night to do that. I want to see what sort of principles and what sort of long-term ideas we can pull out of this dreadful experience.

If it was not a local conspiracy, with no great significance elsewhere, then it was part of a process—this is how I see it—a sort of Grand Guignol caricature of a process which has been developing with macabre inevitability over the century in houses in multiple occupation. I am sure that the uneasiness about the investigations of the Rachman scandal sprang from an anxiety lest those activities compared too closely with the activities of others in the property market.

The Rachman story in that brief period consisted of the well known processes of "de-statting," putting out the statutory tenants, then "sweating." overcrowding and getting tenants in who would pay the highest possible rents. exploiting the sort of tenants who would be willing to pay such high prices. The rents were allowed to accumulate, then the houses were sold, converted or rebuilt. The operators converted themselves into a company, went public, and then got out, leaving the properties in the hands of pensions funds, respectable trade unions and insurance companies.

All this had been going on in areas of this kind for many years. The Rachman scandal simply underlined certain dangers. What the right hon. Gentleman did when he introduced creeping decontrol was to encourage the bad landlord to make himself richer than the good landlord by using devices to get people out of their premises. The Minister thinks I mean intimidation of that kind in houses other than those in multiple occupation; but this is where I have been in dispute with him more than once. My case is that this kind of intimidation takes place in houses in multiple occupation which structurally do not attract the intervention of the local authority's public health department. This is a very important point, and I ask the Minister to consider it. There is a case for looking at houses which are not in ruins and are not even overcrowded.

Sir K. Joseph

I have not said that I do not think there is evidence. I have simply said that I have not got evidence. I am very willing to receive it if there is any.

Mr. Parkin

I hope that the Minister will accept that I could, without much effort, bring many cases forward.

Sir K. Joseph

I do not accept that, but I am very willing to receive the evidence.

Mr. Parkin

To narrow the point, I have brought one specimen case history, which covers a long period, of a successful attempt to get an elderly invalid ex-officer of the Polish Forces out of a controlled tenancy.

It starts in the classic manner with a threat to cut off the gas. The Minister has heard it all before. The old gentleman is told that the lease has fallen in, that they are going to get him out, and that the gas will be cut off before Christmas. So he sends a registered letter on 9th December, 1959—I know it is ancient history, but it is an example of the sort of thing to which I want to draw the Minister's attention. Then, on 22nd December, 1959, there is a letter from the managing agent of the landlords, referring to a telephone conversation in which the tenant was not prepared to consider the alternative accommodation offered, although he did not inspect those premises, and saying that it was always understood that full possession of the accommodation would be given to them by 25th December. Then there is a reference to Miss G, who previously owned the lease and who will be asked to supply details about his tenancy.

This is a skilful step. They do not see the old chap himself, but "soften him up" with threats of this kind. Then, in the last paragraph of their letter there is the statement that they are offering him six alternative addresses for accommodation. In the last paragraph of the letter of 22nd December the agents point out that he would appear to using the accommodation for business purposes, in that this address is used on your business notepaper and pointing out that this is a contravention of the terms of the tenancy. Of course, central Europeans like describing themselves as doctors, or members of some profession, and indicate that on their stationery, but nobody seriously sug- gested that this gentleman was using the premises for accountancy work.

Then, on 30th December, the landlords' agents are informed by Miss G. that the gentleman paid for the top floor £2 11 s. a week". The tenancy commenced in 1948, and the tenant understood that he was taking over a controlled tenancy. The next letter from the landlord is on 5th January, 1960, stating that possession was required, and enclosing a formal notice to quit, expiring on 8th February. There was no reference to a controlled tenancy, but it is stared that an inspection of the accommodation was required, and so on. The notice to quit is in the usual form—just a month's notice. The poor old chap replies that he is surprised, because he has a controlled tenancy, and security of tenure, and that he cannot go because he wishes to retain his tenancy and does not want to accept the alternative accommodation. He is happy in his present flat.

On 20th January he repeats that he is a controlled tenant and does not want alternative accommodation, and sends a cheque for one month's rent up to 25th January. But then, he has a lawyer's letter about obtaining possession of the top floor flat, and acknowledging a cheque for £8 6s. 8d. and adding: We are writing to inform you that as our clients are contemplating proceedings against you, we are accepting your cheque without prejudice to their rights or remedies in this matter. Is this evidence that I should send to the Milner Holland Committee?

Sir K. Joseph

Certainly.

Mr. Parkin

I am glad to hear that because it is what the Second Church Estates Commissioner said to me yesterday afternoon.

The managers then offered him a tenancy in a rearby house for three years. He wrote back and said that he did not want it and was quite happy with his present flat. He stated: As I have a controlled tenancy, I understand I am within my legal rights in retaining it as long as I wish to. He went on to say, as so many of them say in the end—because this had been going on from December to May; they were working on him: If I were in a financial position to buy a house, I would do so to prevent any more of this irksome correspondence. That is what they say in the end. They give up.

Next came the summons in the Marylebone County Court. The summons was defective, because it had the wrong address. Nobody spotted that.

Sir K. Joseph

A summons for what?

Mr. Parkin

It was as follows: You are hereby summoned to appear at Marylebone County Court. The plaintiff claims possession of top floor flat—at 54 Blomfield Road. It was, in fact, 34 Blomfield Road. I do not know whether, at this late date, that would make any difference to the judgment. That, however, was the summons, for vacant possession of a flat at the wrong address.

The summons continued with the plaintiff's particulars of claim: The Church Commissioners for England and Altoni Kalinowski.… The plaintiffs claim and are entitled to possession of a dwelling house comprising the top floor flat of premises known as and situated at 34 Blomfield Road. The address was corrected in the particulars of claim. The said dwelling house was let to the defendant on a parol weekly tenancy in or about 1948.… The said lease expired by effluxion of time on the 25th day of December and the defendant's said tenancy was thereby terminated. Of course it was not. It was a controlled tenancy. It was not terminated by the fact that the lease terminated. Alternatively the plaintiffs by their agents duly determined the said tenancy on the 8th day of February, 1960, by notice to quit dated the 5th day of January, 1960. The ground on which the plaintiffs claim possession is that suitable alternative accommodation is available for the defendant. The Archbishop did not want to live in it. This was a commercial transaction. There was no claim of greater hardship. This was not an owner asking for occupation for himself. There was no legal ground for the claim. It was simply that the owners would like possession because they were offering alternative accommodation.

Here we come to the fascinating point as indicating the state of opinion at that time. The poor man instructed his solicitors and counsel and he set out his own arguments, as he had set them out in the letters. He had a controlled tenancy and he did not have to give it up. The solicitors said to him: Dear Sir, We now have an opinion from counsel and shall be glad to know if you can come in tomorrow morning.

Sir K. Joseph

This was from his own solicitors?

Mr. Parkin

Yes. the tenant's solicitors. They had got counsel's opinion. They said, in effect, "We have prevailed upon the landlords to increase the offer from three years to seven years. They will give you a seven-year lease. Counsel says that the judge will rule against you. He does not want to appear. The court will grant possession if they offer seven years." It went through and there was judgment against the man. So he went into the tenancy which is uncontrolled. Because I have quoted the case tonight, he is not likely to get a renewal—is he?—unless I ask Lord Silsoe, as I do now, through HANSARD or through the Minister, not to take it out of this old chap because I have procured this correspondence.

I have used the case because I wanted an example to show the Minister that this kind of thing happens. None of the characters was going to line his pockets. There was no one in this little tragedy who was going to make a packet out of it. It was a combination of managers and solicitors thinking that they were carrying out the directives given them by the Church Commissioners. To manage their property in the most profitable way, they thought it was their duty to set about clearing out the tenants. This is what we have to discuss. It is far beyond the activities of Alsatian dogs, people fiddling Income Tax and so on. This was the mood. After the Rent Act managers wanted to get possession, and they have got it this way.

I have three lawyers' letters here. One can play a three-card trick with them—"Find the lady" or "Who sent which?" They are in almost identical terms. There is one from the Church Commissioners which I have quoted already on a previous occasion, and I will not repeat it. It is just notice to give up possession within seven days. One says: As solicitors and agents on behalf of… Property Company Ltd., your landlord, we hereby require you to quit and deliver up to us …". Another one says: We, the undersigned—as solicitors and agents for and on behalf of the landlord, … Esq., hereby give you notice to quit and deliver up to him … possession of the unfurnished premises …". This is the standard practice Rachman letter, an example drawn at random. In this case Mr. Blank was not the landlord. It was one of the houses shifted from one company to another.

In the case of the other letters that I read the solicitor did not reveal that his client was his father and that he himself was a director of the property company on whose behalf he was acting. Nor did he reveal what he knew and what the tenant did not know—that his father's company received a substantial sum in consideration of rehousing the man from a controlled dwelling. The Rachman example also happened to refer to somebody who had been misled into moving from the basement to the ground floor on the assurance that he would remain there at the same rent.

I submit that all these letters are, in fact, conspiracies to demand with menaces with intent to steal, and that these characters ought to be in the dock and charged with that offence. This is a habit which has got to stop—these bogus lawyers' letters, this assumption of authority where there is no authority. But without any immediate hope of seeing these characters in the dock, I suggest to the Minister that there is one thing that he can do in this respect.

Will he have some work done in his Ministry to devise a formula which can be stuck into an ordinary rent book transferring to a new tenancy the elements of control which were in the previous one? Behind all these tragedies and rows that we have here there is this nub of plausibility, that we need more mobility in re-arranging tenancies if we are to get improvement of houses. There are cases after cases where if only it could be arranged that someone could move into another flat of a similar character, improvements and amenities could be dealt with. We must have mobility if we are to use space to the best advantage and improve old houses.

Surely it is not beyond the wit of the Ministry to provide this formula. It is beyond the wit of the lawyers. It is extremely difficult to devise a legal document which gives the tenant who moves from one flat to another exactly the same rights as he had before. If that could be done it would be one of the little things which would make it much easier for the decent landlord to suggest to a tenant that he might like to move. At the moment, however, such a suggestion is alarming to the tenant.

Anyone at present who is invited by his landlord to move is liable to be terror stricken in the belief that this is an intention to get him out in order to get the controlled tenancy away from from him. The tenant nowadays is afraid of everything that the landlord may do but if such a formula could be devised, registered by the local authority and recognised as an open deal we could get more of the mobility we need.

Next I come to the actual evictions which persecution and intimidation are intended to achieve. It is a great responsibility to introduce a Measure to deal with this. A Private Member's Bill under the Ten-Minute Rule is not a very rewarding procedure. If hon. Members do not vote against the Motion it is not be taken as evidence that they agree with the Bill but simply that they do not want to be labelled as disagreeing with it.

Surely, in the present climate of public opinion, we have reached the stage where people should not be allowed to be dumped into the start without previous provision being made for their accommodation. That surely must be made law in the near future. But a great deal of work has to be done before that is feasible, and we must have a system applicable to all private landlords, big and small, and to the local authorities, whose tenants must also be given security of tenure.

Not only from the Opposition but from the right hon. Gentleman himself we now have exhortations to the local authorities to increase their housing stock. Even in his policy it is considered right for them to extend their activities and that means that they must brush away all the cobwebs—the view, for example, that their housing is only for a small section of the community. They must get rid of silly regulations about whether people are allowed to keep budgerigars or about hedges being clipped in one way or another, with only the one sanction—eviction.

That sort of thing must go. Other methods of discipline must be found—perhaps by moving a tenant into a flat not as good as his old one if he does not behave himself. Of course we must have a way of dealing with bad tenants, for it is no use denying that there are bad tenants. But surely there is some way of bringing them to book without imposing the death penalty on the home—above all chucking the wife and children into the street. That is grotesque and out of date.

We have a lot of work to do before we can get this worked out into a system of law applying equally to private landlords and local authorities. Some landlords have begun to set a good example. I found an alarming instance in property owned by the Church Commissioners involving a lawyer's letter. They were horrified and issued an apology. Lord Silsoe assured me that it had not happened before and would not happen again. But Lord Silsoe does not know. He believes it when he says that no such letters go out. He has to be pushed to look at the matter again.

He believes it, and so do the parishioners who are told that the Church Commissioners have never resorted to court proceedings. But I have here a photostat copy of a summons issued by them. They must find out more about it. They have been property owners for a very long time, and they are in a position to make a constructive contribution to this technique of management by other than local authorities. I hope that they will join in.

They first said that they were willing to state that they would never evict, and then there was that small modification that they wished to re-state their policy. But it is no good re-stating a policy if if does not work anyway. That is not good enough. But the good intention was there. An example was set and I think that they will go on working towards it. Many local authorities have accepted these responsibilities. In my constituency the L.C.C. recently took over a dreadful place, the Walterton Estate, the freehold of which it had bought from the Church Commissioners. A number of the houses had been in multiple occupation, and during the last few years of the leases unmentionable things had taken place in them. People were doing as much fiddling as they could to ensure a tenancy under the L.C.C. when the houses were pulled down. The L.C.C. has taken over these properties, and is reconditioning them as fast as it can.

Then came a little alarm that the L.C.C. was asking about half a dozen single tenants to go. Some of them had the shakiest right to a tenancy in the first place, and they are the people who could most easily find accommodation for themselves. The L.C.C. does not, as a matter of policy, offer accommodation in flats to single people, but in tune with what is felt to be a change in public opinion, it has accepted the responsibility of housing these people.

That is a hard thing to ask, because in order to house them the L.C.C. must be able to purchase a house which is capable of being divided into single room flatlets. if it were to offer to put those people into flats I would protest, because they would be withholding a flat from some family on the waiting list.

It is not an easy problem to solve, but one goes some way towards solving it if one accepts the principle and works towards it. The L.C.C. has performed wonders on that estate, but people expect the damage of 100 years to be undone in 100 days. It has settled 1,000 tenants on that estate, with lower rents and proper amenities.

Surely we have to work towards the stage where the same principle applies to public and private property, and to the large and small landlord. We have to break through this bloody-minded deadlock between landlord and tenant which has become the psychological bogy of our debates and of the relationship between tenant and landlord. Some tenants feel that they ought not to do anything at all to the house in which they live because that would be helping the landlord. We must do away with trivialities of that kind.

That is what saddens me, and that is why I am protesting against the Minister's announcement yesterday as if it was a good thing to go ahead with this policy. I am saddened because I thought that we had gone a long way towards solving the problem. I am saddened because I thought that something useful had happened as a result of the final revelation of what had been going on in my constituency, and more particularly in neighbouring constituencies, over a period of years.

We have had a setback. I hope that the Minister will get back into step and appreciate that much more is needed, and that this can be achieved only by a change in his policy on security of tenure. He must be much more emphatic in the lead he gives on the subject of intimidation and eviction. He should announce as a long-term objective what I would announce as a short-term objective—there should be no evictions without a court order; that no court order should be implemented until alternative accommodation is available; such accommodation to include accommodation offered by a welfare department for the rehabilitation of genuine problem families. Public opinion will demand that in the end, and we have to fashion the implements which can make it practicable.

I realise that the hour is late, although I should like to start my speech all over again. I should like to assume that all the problems to which I have referred were either solved or were on the way to being solved. Then only can we proceed towards a reconsideration of what I believe to be the real and most important lesson than Rachmanism has to teach us—the lesson that the Ministry of Housing and Local Government must be renamed. We have spent too much time talking about houses and housing and not enough time talking about people. The finest parts of my speeches are those which are ruled out of order by the Chair, because it is impossible to discuss housing in relation only to the provisions of the Ministry of Housing. What Rachmanism has revealed to us is that Beveridge has to be rewritten. I am talking now to the Fellow of All Souls who did so much work on studying the principles of the social services and leading his party into their new policy and their new attitude to it.

Beveridge would never do it again in that way. It was a most unfortunate thing that we were allowed to build into those welfare services the devices which would have been so useful in the 'thirties, when the main inefficiency in this country was industrial inefficiency. All the unpredictable hazards that Beveridge sought to provide against arose from industrial inefficiency—unemployment, and other things that have now been largely conquered.

It is astonishing to contemplate the amount of progress made in this respect—the understanding of economics; the improvement of relations between management and workers in industry—and to compare it with the failure to deal with the new rogue factor, which is now social inefficiency. The rogue factor now is primarily the security of tenure of the home. The amount of rent paid determines whether for instance what is paid in unemployment benefit is adequate to take a worker through a short period of unemployment.

We could make some progress in this field if the Ministry of Housing were to become a Ministry of Social Efficiency, when we could have an annual survey, debated in the House on a proper occasion, not at half-past three in the morning. The Government could tell us how they think we are doing in one department compared with another of the social services, and could describe the layout for the next year or two's work. We could then debate the fundamental lessons to be learnt from the dreadful events which have had to be dragged into the public view—which the public has seen, which it has regarded with horror, and will begin to think about.

I hope that this House and the Government—who reflect the composition of this House—will not fall behind the demands of public opinion for greater social efficiency.

3.30 a.m.

The Minister of Housing and Local Government and Minister for Welsh Affairs (Sir Keith Joseph)

I am grateful for the personal words of courtesy with which the hon. Gentleman the Member for Paddington, North (Mr. Parkin) began his speech. The conditions of which he has been speaking reflect the state of shortage of houses in the big cities, and they reflect also the distortion which exists because of the accumulation of laws, including rent control, introduced to protect tenants during a period of shortage. The removal both of shortage and of distortions is a much more delicate and difficult business than imposing controls. I am quite sure that as we remove the shortage and as gradually we remove the distortion, the conditions about which the hon. Gentleman rightly complains will cease to exist.

The hon. Gentleman spoke as if creeping decontrol itself created a new temptation and a new opportunity for the exploitation of tenants, but in fact, of course, the opportunity and the temptation are there whether there is rent control or not. When rent control was virtually universal for all property under a certain rateable value the temptation to the landlord—to the few landlords concerned—was to obtain vacant possession in order to sell the property. The landlord would not be tempted to relet the property because at that time all relet property was subject to rent control. But the temptation to obtain vacant possession for one reason or another was still strong, because what maintained a high price, in the conditions of the even greater shortage of those days, was vacant possession on sale. The hon. Gentleman cannot deny this because—I took down his words—"Rachmanism—all this", he said, "had been going on for years".

When rent control ceases to be universal over whole blocks of property under a certain rateable value, and some of it is subject to creeping decontrol, that is to say, to decontrol on the death or voluntary movement—or, in some few cases, the enforced movement, I regret to say, of the tenant—then the temptation to the landlord to obtain vacant possession still remains; but now he has a choice. He can either sell the property or he can let it at a higher price. Therefore, in a condition of shortage there will always be a temptation to some landlords to obtain vacant possession, either to sell or to let, and the total removal of rent control does not alter that temptation and opportunity.

The hon. Gentleman based his argument this evening on one case, and I was grateful to him for going through it at some length. Of course, as he himself knows and agrees, it is perfectly proper for a landlord to offer alternative accommodation to a tenant. But I must say that I regard it as only proper for the landlord to do so if the transaction is conducted openly with no suppression of rights or implications. It is not the landlord's job to give the tenant legal advice, but I think that the tenant is entitled to expect that the landlord will at least expose, in his offer to the tenant, the tenant's position.

Mr. Parkin

This is a small but terribly important point. In this case the tenant had only just become the tenant of that particular landlord. Would not the Minister agree that the reasonable thing to do would be, not to give legal advice, but to say, "Miss X has lost her lease of this house. We are now the landlords. Don't worry, we are having a look at the tenancies, what is yours?" and explain what the tenant's rights are? Surely there is a difference between not giving legal advice and starting from an assumption of hostility? Surely the civilised procedure should be to put the man's mind at rest and to say, "Dont worry, we will look at it"?

Sir K. Joseph

I would certainly accept that any landlord who respects his reputation for decent dealing would see to it that no relevant crucial facts were suppressed, but I cannot believe that the landlords the hon. Member has quoted were aware of the suppression of facts—if they were suppressed. The House will appreciate that my difficulty is that I cannot be expected—nor should I be—to give a judgment on a transaction spread out over a number of months and involving a large number of letters without more study. I would be glad if the hon. Member would send me the file of this case so that I can at leisure look into the correspondence and see if there are any conclusions I should like to draw.

The hon. Member on the basis of that case—and I do not deny that there may be others, the hon. Member for Willesden, West (Mr. Pavitt) has sent me three examples—has erected a very large allegation, namely that there is intimidation on a substantial scale in property that is not multi-occupied. Despite his opening remarks, the hon. Member must agree that the Government in Part IV of the Housing Bill have initiated action which should broadly deal with intimidation where it exists, and if it exists, in multi-occupied property. What he is now asserting is that this intimidation also exists in property which is in occupation by a single family.

Mr. Parkin

The right hon. Gentleman should not press that point unduly. He ought to know that in 10 years I have not mentioned a house other than one in multiple occupation. I repeat what I have tried to explain to him. That was why I chose this example. This was not a house which would have attracted the attention of the local authority in any respect. It was in perfectly good order and the amenities would be adequate, but the landlords' agents, thinking, to do their duty by their masters, chose this sort of psychological built up of intimidation which is very difficult to combat.

Sir K. Joseph

I accept that the hon. Member is giving an example which would fall outside the scope of Part IV of the present Bill. What I am not prepared to accept is that this sort of case exists on a substantial enough scale to justify a change in the law. I am willing to accept evidence—in fact without waiting for further evidence, I am willing now to look once again to see if we can improve on the regulations about what should go into the rent book. It may be that we can slightly improve the protection of the more ignorant tenant by looking again at the regulations, and that I shall do.

The hon. Member rightly stressed the importance of mobility and the importance during a period of urban renewal of enabling people to be moved in a civilised fashion to alternative accommodation. This is a matter which can be taken through the courts and there is there a way for the landlord to offer satisfactory alternative accommodation. When the hon. Gentleman goes on to his oft-repeated but sound concern about evictions, I must tell him that I do not think it would be sensible to try to make any more on this—even if we knew what the right move should be and, frankly, I do not—until the Milner Holland Committee has reported.

The hon. Gentleman rightly accepts the need for mobility and for reasonable tenants as well as reasonable land- lords. I, on my side, accept the need to look again at the question of eviction to reduce the barbarity with which it is sometimes accompanied. But, having set up a very powerful Committee, and the report being imminent in a matter of months, [...] think we must wait to see what conclusions that Committee conies to on the facts before deciding what is the right step, if any, we should take.

I must conclude by returning to the basic fact that only when there are enough dwellings for householders, and when the major distortions of rent have been ironed out, will we get back to the healthy relationship between landlord and tenant which the hon. Gentleman so rightly desires. I lay claim to one thing at this hour in the morning; that what the Government published yesterday, the South-East Study and the White Paper connected with it, brings nearer the hope of bringing to an end the intolerable pressures caused by the shortage of houses in the metropolis.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.