§ Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Hawkins.]
§ 11.39 p.m.
§ Mr. Bruce Douglas-Mann (Kensington, North)I am grateful to Mr. Speaker for having selected this subject for debate this evening to enable me to raise the serious problem of the illegal eviction and harassment of tenants of privately rented property.
§ hear we shall pursue in the Department. We are not in the least—
§ It being half-past Eleven o'clock, Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER put the Question forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 100 (Statutory Instruments, &c. (Procedure)).
§ The House divided: Ayes 22, Noes 104.
1629| Division No. 43.] | AYES | [11.32 p.m. |
| Bidwell, Sydney | Grant, George (Morpeth) | Pentland, Norman |
| Booth, Albert | Jones, T. Alec (Rhondda, West) | Prescott, John |
| Brown, Ronald (Shoredith & F'bury) | Kaufman, Gerald | Roderick, Caerwyn E. (Br'c'n&R'dnor) |
| Cohen, Stanley | Kerr, Russell | Varley, Eric G. |
| Davis, Clinton (Hackney, Central) | Latham, Arthur | |
| Douglas-Mann, Bruce | Leadbitter, Ted | TELLERS FOR THE AYES: |
| Driberg, Tom | McNamara, J. Kevin | Mr. George Cunningham and |
| Evans, Fred | Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire) | Mr. Nigel Spearing. |
| Fletcher, Raymond (Ilkeston) | O'Halloran, Michael |
| NOES | ||
| Archer, Jeffrey (Louth) | Green, Alan | Percival, Ian |
| Astor, John | Gummer, Selwyn | Pounder, Rafton |
| Atkins, Humphrey | Hall, Miss Joan (Keighley) | Powell, Rt. Hn. J. Enoch |
| Biffen, John | Haselhurst, Alan | Proudfoot, Wilfred |
| Blaker, Peter | Hawkins, Paul | Pym, Rt. Hn. Francis |
| Boardman, Tom (Leicester, S. W.) | Hill, James (Southampton, Test) | Redmond, Robert |
| Boscawen, R. T. | Hornsby-Smith, Rt. Hn. Dame Patricia | Reed, Laurance (Bolton, East) |
| Bowden, Andrew | Howe, Hn. Sir Geoffrey (Reigate) | Roberts, Michael (Cardiff, North) |
| Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hn. John | Howell, David (Guildford) | Rossi, Hugh (Hornsey) |
| Bray, Ronald | Hunt, John | Russell, Sir Ronald |
| Brinton, Sir Tatton | James, David | St. John-Stevas, Norman |
| Brocklebank-Fowler, Christopher | Jenkin, Patrick (Woodford) | Scott-Hopkins, James |
| Carlisle, Mark | Kinsey, J. R. | Shaw, Michael (Sc'b'gh & Whitby) |
| Channon, Paul | Kitson, Timothy | Shelton, William (Clapham) |
| Chapman, Sydney | Knox, David | Skeet, T. H. H. |
| Soref, Harold | ||
| Clegg, Walter | Lloyd, Rt. Hn. Selwyn (Wirral) | Spence, John |
| Cockeram, Eric | Longden, Gilbert | Stanbrook, Ivor |
| Coombs, Derek | Loveridge, John | Stuttaford, Dr. Tom |
| Corfield, F. V. | MacArthur, Ian | Taylor, Frank (Moss Side) |
| Crouch, David | McLaren, Martin | Taylor, Robert (Croydon, N. W.) |
| Crowder, F. P. | Macmillan, Maurice (Farnham) | Tebbit, Norman |
| Curran, Charles | Mather, Carol | Thomas, John Stradling (Monmouth) |
| d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Maj.-Gen. Jack | Maude, Angus | Thompson, Sir Richard (Croydon, S.) |
| Dykes, Hugh | Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J. | Trew, Peter |
| Eyre, Reginald | Meyer, Sir Anthony | Vaughan, Dr. Gerard |
| Fenner, Mrs. Peggy | Moate, Roger | Waddington, David |
| Fidler, Michael | Money, Ernie | Walder, David (Clitheroe) |
| Finsberg, Geoffrey (Hampstead) | Montgomery, Fergus | Ward, Dame Irene |
| Fookes, Miss Janet | Morgan, Geraint (Denbigh) | Weatherill, Bernard |
| Fowler, Norman | Morrison, Charles (Devizes) | White, Roger (Gravesend) |
| Fox, Marcus | Noble, Rt. Hn. Michael | Worsley, Marcus |
| Fraser, Rt. Hn. Hugh (St'fford & Stone) | Normanton, Tom | |
| Goodhew, Victor | Oppenheim, Mrs. Sally | TELLERS FOR THE NOES: |
| Gorst, John | Osborn, John | Mr. Tim Fortescue and |
| Gower, Raymond | Page, Graham (Crosby) | Mr. Keith Speed. |
| Grant, Anthony (Harrow, C.) | Parkinson, Cecil (Enfield, W.) |
§ The Rent Act, 1965, made it a criminal offence to evict a tenant without a court order, or to harass a tenant by threats, by withholding services or interfering with the peace or comfort of the occupier of residential premises.
§ Hon. Members will have noted from the Press recently, particularly from the Observer and the Sunday Times of 15th and 22nd November, that in certain areas of our cities, particularly but by no means exclusively in London, illegal evictions and harassment are constantly 1631 occurring. It is difficult for most of us who own our own homes, or are the tenants of local authorities which regard the provision of housing as a social or legal responsibility, to imagine the difficulties, anxiety, apprehension and insecurity under which millions of families live.
§ About 16 per cent. of the population are tenants of private landlords, protected by the Rent Acts. Most of those landlords observe the law: they accept fair rents or controlled rents, in spite of the fact that their houses would be more valuable with vacant possession, and make no attempt to evict the families who live in them. But a substantial and I am afraid an increasing number of landlords are taking advantage of the ineffectiveness of the law, the difficulty of securing convictions and the total inadequacy of the penalties, to make large profits from criminal activities.
§
The profits that can be made from this kind of gangsterism are substantial. To quote from the Sunday Times of 15th November:
A house full of controlled tenants can fetch £2,500. But with vacant possession the same house can be sold for as high as £12,000.
No wonder it is worth while for landlords to employ "winklers"—which is the term in current use, meaning men who evict families from their rightful homes—and pay them large sums to harass tenants, to bully, threaten, cajole and make life intolerable for them until the tenants, frightened even to go to work and leave their families and children alone, give up and leave the landlords to their profits.
§ Unless action is taken speedily, my fear is that the illegal activities of a minority are liable to infect the law-abiding majority, and that the one household out of every six who live in private landlord accommodation could face similar risks such as those which have been described recently in the Press.
§
The actions we are taking to prevent eviction and harassment are quite ineffective. The Minister in reply to a Question I tabled said on 21st July:
Between the coming into force of the Rent Act 1965, on 8th December 1965, and the end of 1969 there were 574 prosecutions for illegal eviction, 383 of them resulting in conviction, and 656 for harrassment, 347 of these resulting in conviction. The average fine imposed
1632
was just under £20. Sentences of imprisonment were imposed in five cases."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 21st July, 1970; Vol. 804 c. 80.]
§ In Islington alone there were 2,000 complaints within that period, in Kensington and Chelsea over 1,300. Many of the complaints were trivial—frivolous perhaps—but a certain number of people thought it necessary to go to the town hall to seek advice about their legal entitlements to protection under the Rent Acts and only a tiny minority resulted in prosecutions. And Islington has one of the best records of any borough in the country.
§ The fines imposed were £20—for a profit that could amount to £500 for every room involved! No wonder a landlady in a case reported in today's Daily Telegraph said "It was worth it". The case quoted in that newspaper was exceptional in the fact that the landlady in question was fined £50 instead of the average £20. In that case the woman concerned was incensed by the fact that the Rent Tribunal had reduced the rent of the family from £4 to £3 7s. 6d.
§ The landlady smashed all their windows, tipped ink and disinfectant over clothes, bedding and cupboards, threw toys through windows and smeared lard on the stairs. The mother and two-year-old twins returned to the flat one day and saw broken glass littering the front steps and had to climb the lard-covered stairs to get in. Ink, salt, brandy and disinfectant had been tipped in cupboards, over bedding and clothes, in a teapot and kettle, and the floor was flooded with water.
§ For that attempt to evict the family in question the landlady was fined £50. That is just today's shocking example. In my own area of Notting Hill, in Islington, in every area where property values are rising exceptionally fast, landlords wanting to cash in are adopting similar methods. The stress and hardship that this causes is appalling. Any hon. Members who have experience of trying to sort out the problems of families who have been evicted, legally or illegally, will know the state of shock and bewilderment in which they find themselves. Legal evictions are bad enough, but they can be prepared for because the families know that they are coming. But illegal evictions cannot be prepared for. The families which suffer them have usually lived through the 1633 apprehension and fear hundreds of times before they happen. It is not surprising that many families crack under the strain.
§ We can take steps to prevent this kind of thing happening. First, we must reduce the number of evictions which occur by taking action before they happen, not afterwards. Here the rôle of the police is vital. They could and should act to preserve the status quo when an eviction is threatened. They should encourage landlords to allow families whom they have wrongfully evicted back into occupation until the matter can be resolved by the civil courts.
§ At present the attitude adopted by the police is wholly negative. They will act only to prevent a breach of the peace. But apparently—this is confirmed by the Superintendent of Notting Hill police station—the police take the view that to remove a tenant's furniture out on to the street is not conduct likely to cause a breach of the peace, and they do not intervene in those circumstances.
§ The police are the only agency available at nights and at weekends when evictions take place, and they are the only instrument which can be effective in stopping evictions. It is essential that they should be requested to take the steps which are needed.
§ I can understand that the police do not wish to be involved in disputes of this kind where both parties assert rights which are for the civil courts to resolve, but they are the only body which can do it.
§ My second proposal is that magistrates' courts should be enpowered to grant ex-parte injunctions to prevent evictions and, after hearing both parties, to restrain harassment. I urge that it should be the magistrates' courts, not the county courts, as magistrates' courts sit on Saturdays. The procedure is quicker, and the order made by the court will be served by a police officer, not the court bailiff. The magistrates' courts are more used to complainants appearing in person than the county courts. The magistrates' courts also have responsibility for enforcing Sections 30 and 32 of the Rent Act.
§ The injunction procedure which I am advocating already exists in the High Court and the county court; but it is 1634 hopelessly difficult. I have had experience of using it successfully on more than one occasion, but it is an exhausting procedure to get the injunction to operate. To use it quickly is almost impossible for the average tenant. He goes to the police, and if a magistrates' court injunction procedure existed the police could guide him to it. That injunction procedure should be available to both the tenant and the local authority.
§ Thirdly, and finally, the penalties must be more severe. To evict a family from its home should be treated for what it is—a quite atrocious offence. There can be mitigating circumstances. There are bad tenants as well as bad landlords. Where the landlord and tenant have to share the same house there will often be friction and problems. It should be possible legally to evict a bad tenant, whether his accommodation is furnished or unfurnished. But when a landlord is turning a family out of its home illegally simply to make a commercial profit, society should express its abhorrence.
§ The London Boroughs Association has recommended that penalties should be stiffer. I urge that the maximum fine for illegal eviction should be £2,000 for a first offence, with a minimum of £200 in the absence of "special circumstances".
§ Only by treating these offences for what they are—serious crimes for gain against the families concerned, analogous to robbery with violence—will we prevent the suffering, anxiety, and distress from which so many families are suffering.
§ 11.50 p.m.
§ The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Paul Channon)I think that the House would like to congratulate the hon. Member for Kensington, North (Mr. Douglas-Mann) on raising this evening an exceedingly serious and important social problem. I think that all hon. Members are aware of the importance of the topic that the hon. Gentleman has raised. I know that he has been interested in these matters for a long time, and that he has given evidence to the Francis Committee. This committee is considering the whole working of the Rent Acts, and I shall see that the attention of the committee is drawn to the hon. Gentleman's remarks when it is considering what its report 1635 should be on these extremely important and difficult matters. I assure the House that ever since they took office the Government have been concerned about these problems, and that they will continue to worry so long as there is any indication that harassment of the kind mentioned by the hon. Gentleman is occuring anywhere in the country.
It is crucial that both tenants and landlords are aware of their rights, and the House may be interested to know that one of the first actions that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment took on being appointed to his office was to review the proposals for a campaign to draw the attention of tenants to their security of tenure rights, and it was decided by my right hon. Friend to strengthen this campaign by stepping up the expenditure allotted to it by nearly 60 per cent. Perhaps hon. Members have seen some of the advertisements that have appeared in the Press. I hope and think that they will have some good effect.
I must point out to the House that one difficulty is that this is a field in which my right hon. Friend has no direct powers. Under the Act passed by our predecessors, harassment of a residential occupier with intent to make him give up occupation, and eviction of a residential occupier, without a court order for possession, were made criminal offences, and local authorities were and are empowered to prosecute for them.
As the hon. Gentleman knows, and indeed as he has said, it is open to any tenant to protect himself by civil action. An injunction requiring the landlord to restore the status quo—which must be sought in a county court, not a magistrates' court, can usually be obtained quickly, and it is also open to the tenant to proceed for damages against the offending landlord. The Act specifically provides that the fact that the landlord has been prosecuted for one of these offences shall not prejudice any civil proceedings in respect of the same offence.
I take note of what the hon. Gentleman said about the need for injuctions to be obtainable in a magistrates' court, and not only in a county court. The hon. Gentleman is a lawyer, and I am not, but I am advised that to have such 1636 an injunction would be totally unprecedented. All I can say is that in reviewing the Francis Committee's Report I shall draw the attention of the Law Officers to what the hon. Gentleman has said. I should not like the hon. Gentleman to suppose that I necessarily accept what he has said, because I understand that there are considerable legal difficulties in having this procedure, but I shall have the matter studied.
What is incontrovertible and must worry the House is that the prospect of tackling unaided the unfamiliar processes of the law must be very daunting to many tenants. It is, however, a matter on which local authorities may be able to give some guidance. Some local authorities have already made special arrangements to help and advise private tenants in difficulties with their landlords.
My right hon. Friends and I are exceedingly anxious to see the establishment of housing aid centres throughout the country. If and when it becomes possible to establish such centres, I hope that this sort of advice will become much more widely available. Subject to anything that the Francis Committee recommends, I have it in mind to explore with local authorities the possibility of their advising tenants how to set about this course of action.
I think that the hon. Gentleman would like to know what information we have on the use made of the provisions in question since they came into force, on the nature of these offences and on the circumstances in which they are most likely to occur.
From the coming into force of the 1965 Act to the end of 1969 there were about 570 prosecutions for illegal eviction, 383 of them resulting in convictions, and some 650 for harassment, 347 of them resulting in conviction. Sentences of imprisonment were imposed in six cases, the sentence being suspended in one.
The hon. Member may have noticed a slight discrepancy between these figures and my answer on 21st July. That is because we have been checking these figures once more and there is a small error which I now want to set straight. The figures I have given tonight are the most up to date we have.
In 1967, when the Act had been running for more than a year, the Ministry 1637 and the Welsh Office made a survey, with the aid of a number of local authorities, of the functioning of the provisions. The authorities which helped included all the London boroughs, a number of county boroughs, including Cardiff, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool, and a selection of urban and rural district councils. So it included the vast majority of authorities covering areas in which housing pressures were very great, as well as a small number in which they were not very great.
The authorities were asked for information not only about prosecutions but also about complaints and for comments on features emerging from complaints and offences. The findings of this survey were consolidated in a report which was placed in the Library and is available to hon. Members.
Although that report is now three years old, additional material emerging since these offences suggests that its conclusions are as valid as when it was made. The most important, if the most obvious conclusion, was that complaints of these offences and the offences themselves are largely factors of housing stress. Both complaints and actual offences were more frequent in the great conurbations and in London—where the situation between inner and outer London could be distinguished.
The House will not be surprised to learn that these offences are more common in the inner than in the outer London boroughs. Of the eight London boroughs which reported more than 300 complaints in the period covered, all but two included districts listed in the Milner Holland Report as having 10 per cent. or more of all households overcrowded. There can therefore be little doubt that harrassment and illegal eviction are largely a product of housing shortage.
The second conclusion was that by no means all these offences spring from the motive of gain. This undoubtedly operates and is a product of housing shortage. It is offences due to this motive—getting tenants out for purposes of profit—which can be called morally as well as legally criminal and this is what the 1965 Act is basically aimed at. But the offences can also be committed possibly by people who are themselves hardly less victims of housing shortage and the 1638 situations to which it gives rise than those against whom they offend. These are the people who find themselves compelled to house—perhaps to share bathrooms and lavatories with—other people with whom they cannot get on, and who perhaps are not paying rent or are otherwise behaving in such a way as to cause understandable distress to their landlords or to other tenants.
I was glad that the hon. Member, in his very fair survey, pointed out the problems of bad tenants as well as bad landlords. A point to which many local authorities drew attention was the frequency with which investigation of complaints revealed landlord-tenant squabbles in which the tenant was not necessarily the only injured, or indeed the most injured party, and the number of such cases in which accommodation was shared.
The Metropolitan Police tell us that, out of 1,104 complaints of these offences in their district in 1968, 793 related to premises with a resident landlord.
§ Mr. Clinton Davis (Hackney, Central)There is one other source of great anxiety which is being experienced in my borough, where a landlord obtains very little interest for the equity, because he has a substantial first, then second mortgage and then decamps, having made a substantial profit at the expense of the tenants, who are then themselves evicted by the building society. Is this a matter which the Francis Committee will be investigating?
§ Mr. ChannonI said that I would draw the Committee's attention to this debate. The hon. Gentleman's remarks will, therefore, be studied by that Committee, and I am sure that careful note will be taken of what he and other hon. Member's have said on this whole subject.
Another factor disclosed by the survey was the ignorance of many landlords of the obligations the law impose on them and the protection is gives their tenants. This ignorance was one reason why, many authorities found, the sending of a warning letter to a person said to be harassing a tenant or contemplating an illegal eviction often settled the matter. The offender or potential offender just had not realised that he might be breaking the law.
1639 The Ministry has since produced a small leaflet entitled "Landlords and the Law" which briefly explains to landlords how the law affects them, and copies of this have been supplied to local authorities, citizens' advice bureaux, rent officers, rent tribunals and others for issue to landlords who seem to be in need of the information. Extensive publicity has also been directed to informing tenants of the protection the law gives them; security of tenure was indeed the main theme of the Department's recent campaign on this subject. Tenants' rights to security of tenure, and the protection given them against harassment and eviction without a court order, are also among the matters which, under the Rent Book (Forms of Notice) Regulations, 1965, must be set out in the prescribed terms in the rent books which must be provided for weekly tenants.
The hon. Gentleman referred to penalties and I have certainly taken note of his remarks. I await the recommendations of the Francis Committee and, when they are received, the matter will be examined carefully. The maximum penalties for these offences under the 1965 Act are, for a first offence, a fine of up to £100 or imprisonment for up to six months or both, and for a second or subsequent offence a fine of up to £500 or imprisonment for up to six months or both. The use the courts make of these penalties is something on which I cannot comment. The penalties laid down by the Act are, however, among the matters which we have asked the Francis Committee to study; and should they recommend any change my right hon. Friend will of course give their proposals very sympathetic consideration.
A minimum penalty would be wholly contrary to the well-established principle in the administration of criminal justice in this country that Parliament should indicate the comparative gravity of the offence by prescribing the maximum penalty which it considers appropriate but, subject to that maximum, that the courts should have complete discretion to determine the penalty for a particular breach of the law, having regard to all the circumstances of the offence and the offender.
Any attempt to administer justice in a vacuum by requiring the imposition of a 1640 standard minimum penalty without regard to the circumstances could not fail to cause injustice and hardship. No matter how grave the type of offence, there will always be cases in which the extenuating circumstances are such as to make the imposition of a standard penalty inequitable. Nevertheless, I will ensure that my right hon. Friend studies the hon. Gentleman's comments in connection with the recommendations which the Francis Committee may make.
The hon. Gentleman also raised the question of the rôle of the police in these difficult cases. These are, of course, matters for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Home Department. I have, however, consulted him and I understand that the police, if called by either party to the scene of an eviction, will intervene if there is any risk of a breach of the peace or of a criminal offence of any kind being committed. They have been asked by my right hon. Friend to warn a landlord in such cases that he may be in breach of the appropriate provisions of the Rent Act and that they intend to report the facts of the case, as far as they have been able to ascertain them, to the local authority. I hope that this has the effect in many cases of restraining landlords or tenants from any untoward action.
I appreciate, however, that hon. Members may feel that in such circumstances the police should take more positive action to protect the tenant from eviction. I will explain why the police cannot go further than they do. The problem is quite simply that a constable who attends such a situation often has no way of knowing the rights and wrongs of the situation. It is not clear to him, and cannot be clear, who is in the right in a situation in which an alleged landlord and alleged tenant are making allegations against each other. The constable cannot know at the time whether there is anything in the suggestions that the offence of harassment has been committed.
We are here in a situation where complex issues relating to landlord-tenant law are involved. The facts of the situation are often contested and it would be quite wrong for a constable to appear to take sides when there has been no opportunity for proper investigation of the allegations made. It seems to my 1641 right hon. Friend therefore, that it is better that when these unfortunate and sometimes tragic situations arise, machinery exists for persons, more knowledgeable than the police in this difficult branch of the law, to look into the facts of the situation and do what they can in due course to settle the problems that have arisen. It is, therefore, no wish of the police to appear unhelpful, but if they were to intervene positively before the facts are known they would be open to very justifiable criticism.
If any member of the public feels that the police had acted improperly, either because they had intervened in a way which the complainant feels is unjustifiable or have failed to intervene in circumstances in which the complainant feels that the police could justifiably exercise their powers, then there is a statutory procedure for members of the public to lodge a complaint.
In conclusion, I would stress that these offences are by no means general throughout the country. In most parts of the country, indeed, they are practically unknown. The hon. Gentleman says that they are increasing. That is not borne out by the figures. Even in the conurbations there are, we must remember, hundreds of thousands of tenants who are on perfectly satisfactory terms with their landlords. But where these offences are prevalent, which is broadly where pressure on housing is extreme, they constitute a very serious problem; and we intend to do all we reasonably can to eradicate them. It will be extremely difficult to do that. Nevertheless, the real answer to this problem is the overcoming of housing shortages. I do not believe that we shall ever cure the problems of harassment or illegal eviction until housing shortages are overcome.
The policies already announced by my right hon. Friend, which hon. Members opposite may disagree with—the extension of the fair rent system, which we hope will help to make the letting of dwellings less unattractive, and the provision of rent allowances which eliminate the friction that may arise where many tenants are unable to pay the rent because 1642 they have not got the money—will have a great rôle to play in curing the problems of illegal eviction and harassment.
We are engaged in a genuine revolution. There may be a disagreement about whether we are engaged in the right revolution. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] I can understand that. The Government's aims are exciting. They are designed to promote fairness—fairness for the tenant and fairness for the landlord. It is no use one side of the House trying to be fair to tenants and the other side trying to be fair to landlords. That way misery lies for both parties, and I believe that the House should responsibly reject that course.
We are trying to provide a realm of housing finance which will be fair to both sides. If we achieve that, as I think we will, I believe that the problems of harassment and illegal eviction will dwindle. If and when we cure the problem of housing shortages they will dwindle even faster, but that will be extremely difficult.
Where illegal eviction and harassment take place, they are disgraceful offences which no right thinking person can condone or tolerate. Hon Members on both sides are in agreement about this matter.
We shall carefully study what the Francis Committee recommends about this very important problem, and I hope that we can tackle this problem together. I hope that there will not be substantial differences between both sides of the House as to the measures needed to tackle the problem. Whether there are or not is irrelevant, because what we must do as a House is try to deal with the whole problem of housing and put it on a fair and equitable basis; and, where disgraceful actions, either by landlords or by tenants take place, it is the duty of the House, and one from which the Government will not shrink, to try to stamp out the practice which we find both obnoxious and hateful.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Adjourned accordingly at eight minutes past Twelve o'clock.