HC Deb 22 July 1975 vol 896 cc297-9

3.33 p.m.

Mr. John Ovenden (Gravesend)

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to extend security of tenure and rent regulations to tenants of non-resident landlords where meals are provided which are not prepared on the premises. The Bill that I seek leave to introduce is part of a continuing fight against evasion of the laws guaranteeing security of tenure to tenants. Every time Parliament acts to protect tenants from excessive rents or eviction at the whim of a landlord, the more cunning and unscrupulous landlords embark on the search for loopholes in the law.

When the tenants of unfurnished accommodation were granted security of tenure and tenants of furnished accommodation were not, it was common practice for many landlords to seek to provide a collection of cheap, tatty and often delapidated furniture to transform their accommodation into the furnished category. Now, despite the synthetic indignation of the estate agents and the Conservative Party, that distinction has been abolished in the 1974 Rent Act.

Now there is evidence that an even more ingenious and dishonest device is being used to ensure that accommodation can be portrayed as something that it patently is not so that tenants can be charged extortionate rents and be kicked out if they complain. That device is the provision of food—not food cooked on the premises by the proprietor and served to his tenants but food delivered by the landlords as a device to seek to have their accommodation regarded as hotels rather than as rented accommodation.

Such meals are not available to tenants as optional extras or as service provided by catering landlords deeply concerned with the nutrition of their tenants. The acceptance of meals is a condition imposed on those seeking housing—a condition imposed in order to deprive them of their other rights. The accommodation provided is not that of a five star or even a no-star hotel. It is a strange hotel indeed that provides no bed linen, or installs meters for all gas and electricity, It is a pretty poor hotel that fails even to provide breakfast on most mornings when it has contracted to provide it.

The landlords involved in this scandalous practice are driving a coach and horses right through the 1974 Rent Act. In this case it is a coach disguised as a food wagon. This meals-on-wheels service provides, without doubt, the most expensive food in the country. The provision of a few eggs and bacon can increase the income from the property tenfold. By the evasion of Rents Acts one estate agent in the Medway towns, namely, C. O. Bills Ltd., is already charging two families occupying one house a total of £50 a week in rent. One of the firm's directors, Mr. Michael Bills, is planning to build himself a £300,000 golf course—paid for, no doubt, by his ill-gotten gains extorted from homeless families.

This company's victims cone not just from the Gillingham area in which this estate agent's premises are situated, but they include constituents of mine on the council waiting lists in Medway and Gravesham. The company's directors grow rich while its tenants live in rodent-infested, damp and inadequate accommodation. The rents are too high for most people to afford so the county council's social services department has to contribute to them from the ratepayers' money. These firms are, therefore, concerned not only in exploiting the homeless but also in milking the ratepayers.

The Bill is not aimed at eliminating the genuine hotel or boarding house. It is intended to clip the wings of those unscrupulous landlords and estate agents who pose as hoteliers because they see the chance of making extortionate profit from sub-standard accommodation and the opportunity to line their pockets at the expense of the homeless or the ratepayers.

The unscrupulous people involved in this racket are not making extra accommodation available. Their activities are actually reducing the number of permanent homes which are available. They create ther own demand by ensuring that the sort of accommodation which people need is not available to them.

I ask the House for leave to introduce the Bill so that we may put an end to the scurrilous activities of these parasitic landlords before this practice grows and becomes a national scandal instead of a local council scandal.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. John Ovenden, Mr. Ivor Clemitson, Mr. Martin Flannery, Mr. Bruce George, Mr. Bryan Gould, Mr. Mike Noble, Mr. George Rodgers, Mr. J. W. Rooker and Mr. Ron Thomas.