FURNISHED HOUSES (RENT CONTROL) BILL (Hansard, 26 February 1946)

§ THE POSTMASTER-GENERAL (THE EARL OF LISTOWEL)
My Lords, in moving the Third Reading of this Bill, I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Llewellin, and the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Maugham, and several other noble Lords on the Benches opposite for their constructive suggestions which have resulted in a number of improvements in the Bill. An example has been set in the revising of the Legislative proposals that reach us from another place. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a third time.

§ LORD LLEWELLIN
My Lords, may I thank the noble Earl, the Postmaster-General, for the tone of his speech. I believe, with him, that this House has performed a useful function in the Amendments that it has made during the passage of this Bill through the Committee and Report stages. We send the Bill back with the Amendments to another place, quite confident in our own minds on both sides of the House that we have done a useful job of work and one that it is fitting this House should do.

§ VISCOUNT MAUGHAM
My Lords, I have to thank the noble Earl who is in charge of this Bill in this House for what he has said with regard to the Amendments which have been here moved, but I should regard myself as a hypocrite if I pretended it was a good Bill as amended. I have an entirely different view; I think it is a really bad Bill and will work a good deal of harm during the twenty-two 888 months that it is going to be in force. It seems to me extraordinary that we should be asked, by a Bill of this kind, to subject the question of rents of practically every flat in the country, however much it may be a luxury flat and however high its rent, to a tribunal about which we know nothing. A number of tribunals are going to be appointed under the Bill. There is no qualification as to their experience or knowledge, and I know, as I think most of your Lordships must know, that at the present moment it will not be possible to get one hundred or more competent tribunals—competent in the sense that they are to be allowed, without appeal, to fix the rents of all the flats in the land.
Take, for instance, a flat in Grosvenor Square the rent of which may be over £1,000 a year. According to this Bill, all those flats, because there are certain amenities granted in connexion with them other than the occupation of the rooms, are to be subject, at the request of the tenant or the local authority, to an arbitration by a tribunal (as to which I will say another word in a moment), who are at liberty to alter the rent if they think it is too high. Nothing is said in the Bill as to the things they have to consider. There is no qualification whatever of their powers. If they take a communistic view, they may reduce the£1,000 rent to £100. Of course I do not suppose they will, but it is only the extent of the power which I am mentioning at the moment. And there is no appeal whatever, even to the Minister. I speak with a very long experience. I do not believe there is on the Statute Book a single Act which gives such wide powers to deal with real estate in this country, including landlord and tenant powers, as this Bill does, with so little safeguard for the interest of the people who are concerned.
With regard to the larger places, the harm that will be done is, I think, very largely this: that while this Act is on the Statute Book or has a chance of being extended in its operation by one of the Bills that are forced through the other House, I do not believe any sensible man will erect flats. We want buildings to be constructed, but if the result of constructing your building is that, you will not be able to let the flats at the proper price or, if you do so let them, you will be liable to have the rents reduced to an uneconomic sum, a great deal of harm will be done.
889 So much for the more important houses which are affected by this Bill. The other thing which I think is thoroughly bad is that if a single room is let in a poor dwelling to a poor man or woman, and you happen to give them just a little lighting accommodation, the room then becomes a furnished one; it becomes a service. That is perfectly deliberate, because the clause that does is Clause 12, where services are defined, and it says: 'Services' includes attendance, the provision of heating or lighting. … So if you produce a little lighting it is to be a furnished room, and you are at once liable to the incursion of the tribunal who may reduce the rent, whatever it is, to a sum which the tribunal thinks is sufficient. As a result people who do not desire to have a tribunal coming in and fixing rent—the wiser and more prudent of them at any rate—will remove the lighting accommodation which they have given to their poor tenants perhaps for years. That is not sensible, but there it is, and that I am quite sure will be the result of it.
I am grateful to the noble Earl for what he has done, because I think the amendment which is made in the Acts as regards the rooms which are subject to it is a very important one, and I would like to say in the plainest possible language that the last person I blame for the lack of the clauses which I think should be contained in this Bill is the noble Earl opposite. I am quite sure that he has, as his first task, to make a sensible Bill, but, of course, when the Postmaster-General is in charge of a Bill relating to furnished houses he is apt to be overruled by the opinions of somebody much more vain and arrogant than the noble Earl is. The result is most pernicious. In leaving the matter as it stands I should like to say that the only gleam of hope I get in reading the Bill is that it is only temporary, but how far and how long the injury which is going to be occasioned by this ill-adjusted piece of legislation will last, is something nobody can foretell.