TENANCIES (NOTICES TO QUIT) (Hansard, 9 February 1976)

§ Mr. Hugh Rossi (Hornsey)
I beg to move, That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Notices to Quit (Prescribed Information) (Protected Tenancies and Part VI Contracts) Regulations 1975 (S.I., 1975, No. 2196), dated 18th December 1975, a copy of which was laid before this House on 5th January 1976, be annulled. I raise this topic tonight because there is a certain amount of anxiety that a matter of this kind should come before the House in this form. The Regulations require a landlord when serving a notice to quit to contain in that notice to quit certain information for the tenant, the effect of which is virtually to say to the tenant "You may ignore the notice to quit". To a limited extent that may well be the case under the existing law.
190 Three questions arise when one considers a measure of this kind. First of all, what is being done requires one private citizen to give legal advice to another private citizen. Second, it requires him to give incomplete legal advice. Third, it tends to worsen the present climate under which landlords are becoming less and less willing to let, thereby aggravating the existing housing shortage.
The first proposition requiring one private citizen to give legal advice to another does not need further elaboration. It is self-evident. The second proposition that that advice, when given, is incomplete requires to be dealt with in more detail.
The schedule to the Regulations contains the prescribed information which is to be given by the landlord to the tenant when serving the notice to quit. Paragraph 2 states: If the tenancy is a protected tenancy under the Rent Acts, the court can normally give the landlord such an order only on the grounds set out in those Acts. What is not stated is that in certain circumstances the court will be obliged to make an order. A county court judge cannot refuse in certain circumstances to grant a possession order. The absence of a paragraph to that effect will have the undesirable consequence of falsely raising a tenant's hopes.
I think one must assume that the ordinary landlord will simply get a copy of the Regulations, and copy what they say on to the notice to quit, or stationers will produce a form of notice to quit with the prescribed information upon it, because that is the legal obligation. The landlord will not consider himself under any obligation to give any further information.
The absence of further information will be misleading. If it is not pointed out to a tenant that there are circumstances in which an order will be made against him, on reading this information he will have false hopes. Moreover, the absence of words of the kind I have indicated will inevitably encourage litigation, because a tenant who reads the Regulations as they are—assuming circumstances in which the landlord may get a possession order—will be tempted to dispute an application for possession in the courts even where he has no legal ground to stand on.
191 It is highly undesirable for litigation to to be encouraged unnecessarily. That is axiomatic. Also, it may well lead to an unnecessary waste of public funds, because a tenant will apply to a solicitor under the legal aid scheme because he is invited to do so, only to be told that he has no case. However, the solicitor will have to be paid for that advice, whereas the matter could be made perfectly plain in these Regulations or in the prescribed information. That amounts to a serious defect.
The other incomplete legal advice which is given arises under paragraph 3, which states: Where the tenancy is not a protected tenancy, the tenant may be able to ask the rent tribunal to postpone the date when the notice to quit runs out for up to six months as long as he does so before the notice runs out. What that fails to do is to tell the tenant that his going to the rent tribunal for security of tenure will avail him nothing in certain circumstances. The tribunal's security is a nullity in certain circumstances because, in the circumstances laid down in the Rent Act 1974, the landlord can go straight to a county court notwithstanding any security of tenure given by a rent tribunal.
These circumstances mean that if the tenant does not continue to pay his rent or comply with the terms of his tenancy agreement, if he causes nuisance or annoyance to other persons in the house or causes damage to the property or to the landlord's furniture, going to a rent tribunal for security of tenure will avail him nothing, the six months will avail him nothing, because the landlord may go straight to a county court and apply there for his possession order.
I suggest that if one is to give legal advice to anybody, or to require someone to give legal advice to a third person, one must ensure that that advice is full and correct in all respects, so that the recipient knows precisely where he stands in law and his hopes are not raised falsely, or public money is not wasted because his hopes have been falsely raised. These Regulations fail to do that. The simple insertion of two paragraphs would meet this criticism.
I hope that in the light of this criticism the Minister will consider withdrawing the Regulations and giving thought to the 192 questions I have raised with him concerning this incomplete legal advice. If he does not do that, we may well find ourselves in the situation envisaged by what I said was my third objection to the Order in this form—that is, that it is making worse, and will tend to make worse, the unhappy climate that recent rent legislation has created in the relations of landlord and tenant.
No one, either inside or outside the House, needs any further conviction that recent legislation has had the effect of making landlords reluctant to rent residential property. They feel that the law is unfairly weighted against them, and the result is that fewer and fewer of them are coming forward with rented accommodation.
The people who suffer are those looking for homes who are seeking rented accommodation. The preliminary correspondence which I have had from landlords who have become aware of the Government's intention is quite unanimous and emphatic. They say "We are regarded as a race not worthy of consideration, completely beyond the pale, and therefore, as far as we are concerned, we want nothing more to do with letting our homes or parts of our homes to other people. It is finished." On the consciences of Labour Members will rest those examples of people who are denied accommodation in future because of legislation of this kind.

§ Mr. George Cunningham (Islington, South and Finsbury)
I assure my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary that I shall resume my seat in about two minutes. If he accedes to the request from the Opposition Front Bench he may make Opposition Members happy, but he will make me deeply unhappy. He must weigh those alternatives one against the other.
I have been pressing for some years for Regulations with this kind of content, and I congratulate the Government on bringing them forward, although I would have wished that they had introduced them rather sooner than after the 19 months which have elapsed since the House passed the legislation under which the Regulations are made.
I wish to make only two points. This is not an unprecedented situation, as has been suggested. We already provide that 193 rent books have to contain certain notes. Although not all of those notes relate to legal advice, some of them do.

§ Mr. Graham Page (Crosby)
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Would you indicate—I am sure it would help the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Cunningham)—whether, having seen the number of hon. Members who wish to speak in the debate on these Regulations, you will exercise your discretion and adjourn this debate? Otherwise the hon. Gentleman will have to continue gabbling through his points in order to get them out in time.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Oscar Murton)
I can put the right hon. Gentleman's mind at rest. There is a good probability under Standing Orders.

§ Mr. Cunningham
Could you elucidate that remark, Mr. Deputy Speaker?

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
We shall be wasting a little time if I do so. I refer to Standing Order 4(2)(a) on the question of lateness of the hour.

§ Mr. Cunningham
That is very clear, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Thank you. In that case, I shall gabble a little less.
The principal criticism that I make of the Regulations is that they prescribe the nature of the information to be contained in the notice to quit, but they do not prescribe either the language or the location of it. At present a notice to quit, simply because of its title, conveys a perfectly clear impression to the tenant that he has to quit after the notice expires. I have known of many cases in my constituency in the last few years when tenants have assumed, until they were advised to the contrary, that they had no legal right to remain there after the notice to quit had expired, and this despite the fact that most of those tenants had enjoyed a measure of security for a very long time. It is those people who do not know the law, who are frightened of even going to a solicitor or a legal advice service, whom we are trying to assist.
I wonder whether the hon. Member for Hornsey (Mr. Rossi) is right in saying that in all cases the information that will be printed on the notice to quit will be in exactly the form set out in the 194 schedule. If a landlord wants his notice to quit to continue to be as baffling and as frightening as it has been in the past, he will be able to ensure this even under these Regulations, because all he has to do is to put in a lot more information than the information that he is required to put in the notice to quit under the Regulations and to word the whole thing in such gobbledegook that the tenant will be even more frightened at the rather frightening words in a normal four-line notice to quit.
During the previous debate I considered what I would do if I were a bad landlord. I have come across a few, so I know their habits. I believe that it would be perfectly lawful under the Regulations——
It being half-past Eleven o'clock, Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER, being of opinion that, owing to the lateness of the hour at which consideration of the motion was entered upon, the time for debate had not been adequate, interrupted the business and the debate stood adjourned till tomorrow, pursuant to Standing Order No. 4 (Statutory Instruments, &c. (Procedure).