Lords Sitting of 24 June 1974

Preamble
The House met at half past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Saint Edmundsbury and Ipswich

CONCORDE: ROUTE PERMISSIONS
LORD THOMAS: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are satisfied that sufficient energy and urgency are being displayed in the applications for route permissions for a British-operated Concorde; and how many airports on British Commonwealth air routes have been cleared for commercial operations by Concorde.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF INDUSTRY (LORD BESWICK): My Lords, the Departments concerned are in discussion with the relevant countries. We are making progress, but it is not desirable to specify details of these discussions while negotiations are proceeding.
LORD THOMAS: My Lords, while thanking the Minister for that Answer, may I ask the noble Lord whether he is aware that whereas the French-built Concorde is shuttling across the Atlantic with great speed and regularity, we do not seem to be doing so much with our British-built Concorde? May I further ask him whether notice is being taken of that and action is being formed accordingly?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, in the first place, there is no such thing as the French-built Concorde or the British-built Concorde: they are all Anglo-French machines built jointly, but assembled in the different countries. Of course, one has noted the achievements of those aircraft, including the most remarkable time-keeping achievements, and I am
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sure that these will be taken into account by the various countries with whom we are now in discussion.
LORD HARVEY OF PRESTBURY: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that his reply is not at all satisfactory? He is well versed in these matters and, as my noble friend says, the initiative appears to have gone towards the French on these matters. May I ask the noble Lord whether he would agree that it is about time the British Government (whatever their complexion) were more forthright in this matter, because it affects tens of thousands of British workers not to mention British engineering and prestige?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, may I tell the noble Lord, whose knowledge of these matters is also considerable, that I am surprised at his disappointing question. There is no question here of our being behindhand: it is simply that negotiations are taking place. The measurements of the production aircraft as regards noise and emission have not been completed so far as certain of these countries are concerned; and these matters are now considered. I assure the noble Lord that on this aspect of the matter there is no question of the French being in front of us.
LORD HARVEY OF PRESTBURY: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord when either House of Parliament can debate this matter, since a massive amount of British taxpayers' money is involved? Is it not about time that we discussed these matters?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I should be happy to debate this matter this afternoon or to-morrow morning; but it makes no difference to the fact that one needs quite detailed technical negotiations with the various authorities. These negotiations are taking place, and it is not right to say that delay lies with the British side of the discussions.
LORD THOMAS: My Lords, will the noble Lord at least admit that the Concorde which has done this large amount of flying was assembled in France, flies from a French airport in Paris and is flown by French crews?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, if it helps the noble Lord. But there is no question of "admitting". I am not quite sure

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what he is getting at. Of course, they have been flown in certain cases by French crews, and in certain cases by British crews. But that is not because of any reluctance on the part of the British authorities here.
LORD SLATER: My Lords, although there has been a considerable amount of criticism ventilated in regard to Concorde, will my noble friend agree that it has received support from certain sectors of the aircraft industry? Will he also agree that, as regards noise and emission, it has become more pronounced in recent months and, indeed, has never been more pronounced than it is at this moment?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, if my noble friend is saying that the nearer we get to success here the more angry and petulant some people get about it, then I agree with him.
THE EARL OF KINNOULL: My Lords, is the noble Lord able to say whether the French are having parallel independent negotiations with other countries, or whether the negotiations are joint ones? Secondly, may I ask the noble Lord whether he can bring us up to date as to the decision on Concorde vis-à-via the American airports?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, so far as the recommendations and discussions with the Americans are concerned, this has been a joint Anglo-French operation. In all the discussions so far there have been representatives of the British and of the French. The situation is that they require measurements to be taken of production aircraft. These measurements are being taken and presentation is being made to the New York airport authorities. I am sure the noble Earl will know that, so far as the United States is concerned, the matter is a little more complicated in so far as one has to satisfy both the Federal authorities and the separate New York airport authorities.
LORD WYNNE-JONES: My Lords, will my noble friend agree that this noteworthy performance by Concorde should be acclaimed equally by both countries involved, and that no attempt should be made to claim credit for one particular country in the matter?
LORD BESWICK: I absolutely agree, my Lords. There really could not have been any effort in history in which both France and Britain have worked together more productively than this one. What my noble friend said is absolutely right. May I make it absolutely clear that when I talked about criticism of the aircraft which has existed in the past and which seems to be getting a little more strident now, I was not referring to the two noble Lords who sit opposite.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, my noble friend mentioned noise. Can he give us any information which will indicate that the problem of excessive noise is being overcome?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, the production aircraft is both quieter and cleaner than the prototype aircraft. It is now no more noisy than current aircraft types already operating.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, as discussions regarding possible routes are in progress, may we now take it that it is the intention of Her Majesty's Government to continue with the production of Concorde?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, the House will appreciate the innocence of the noble Earl, while not expecting my innocence to equal his.
LORD AVEBURY: My Lords, the noble Lord said that the production aircraft is cleaner than the pre-production version. Can he say whether this applies not only to the emission of particulate matter but also to emissions of oxides of nitrogen?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, that is so in both cases. But in the latter case the discussions are of course much more complicated than simply saying whether the emissions are less. It is a matter of whether they are of a sufficiently restricted degree and, again, discussions about this are now taking place.

BUSINESS
LORD STRABOLGI: My Lords, it may be for the convenience of your Lordships if I announce that dinners will be available this evening.
BRITISH TRANSPORT DOCKS BILL
Read 2a, and committed to a Select Committee.
LONDON TRANSPORT BILL
Read 2a, and committed to the Committee on Unopposed Bills.

LORD CHANCELLOR (TENURE OF OFFICE AND DISCHARGE OF ECCLESIASTICAL FUNCTIONS BILL [H.L.]
LORD HAILSHAM OF SAINT MARYLEBONE: My Lords, I understand that no Amendments have been set down to this Bill and that no noble Lord has indicated a wish to move a Manuscript Amendment or to speak in Committee. Therefore, unless any noble Lord objects, I beg to move that the Order of Commitment be discharged.
Moved, That the Order of Commitment be discharged.—(Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

RENT BILL [H.L.]
2.47 p.m.
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (LORD SHEPHERD): My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, that the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Shepherd.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The EARL OF LISTOWEL in the Chair.]
Clause 1 [Extension of protection afforded to furnished tenancies]:
BARONESS YOUNG BARONESS YOUNG moved Amendment No. 1:
Page 1, line 19, at end insert—
"and
(bb) determination of fair rents shall be made by Rent Tribunals."
The noble Baroness said: I beg to move the first Amendment to this short
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but highly technical and somewhat complicated Bill. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, will agree that almost every clause in it refers back to the 1968 Rent Act and therefore, by inference, when a tenancy under this Bill becomes a regulated tenancy, as it does under Clause 1, the fair rent will be determined by the rent officer. This is not stated, though it is implied.
In moving this Amendment I do not want to appear in any way critical of rent officers or the work that they have done; but the fact remains that there is no need for one to have any professional qualification or any relevant experience at all to become a rent officer. I have recently heard of two policemen who have been appointed as rent officers. In these circumstances there could be great variation in the calibre and experience of the people appointed. I have no doubt whatever that, over a period of time, they develop an expertise. I do not know whether or not they are issued with any kind of guidance from the Department of the Environment; but if they are, I should be most interested to see a copy of it.
What is needed in this Bill is confidence. Confidence is required, both on the part of those who are to let furnished property and of those who will become tenants of it. Therefore the landlord needs to have the confidence that when he lets furnished property, which will now command a fair rent, the rent will take account of what he is providing. The tenant needs to have confidence that he is getting a fair deal. Furthermore, this Bill adds more work and far more responsibility to rent officers in regard to the valuation of furniture. It seems to me fairer to the landlord and tenant if such valuation is carried out by the rent tribunals. These people are experienced in dealing with such valuations. Rent tribunals generally consist of three people, usually a lawyer, a valuer and a layman, unlike just a single person. I have tried to find out for the benefit of this debate the kind of variation of detail which they will have to consider in determining a fair rent.
Of course, there is a great variety of furnished tenancies. For instance, some furnished tenancies include quite a number of services. I was told of furnished flats which include a service of being

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cleaned every day, or indeed a laundry service. Services will automatically include internal repairs, which are something not done by the landlord of unfurnished property. Also, the landlord will be responsible for all the internal fitments concerning electricity, water heaters, cookers, et cetera. There is the responsibility for plumbing the central heating. When all these internal repairs are being carried out and when internal redecoration is being done—which is what we would want to see done by any good landlord—the property must almost certainly stand empty, or part of it must be empty, in order for the work to be done. Therefore, a furnished flat once again becomes somewhat different from an unfurnished flat. It seems that if the fair rent does not take adequate account of all this detail one can be certain there will be a steady deterioration in the property. The landlord will be unable to do the necessary repairs, which I am sure we would all regard as completely undesirable. Indeed, it has been a matter of criticism, sometimes justified, where repairs have not been done.
The second alternative could well be as a consequence of this: instead of there being furnished flats or houses to let, people would be offered full board and the house would become a kind of cheap hotel. This again is not what people necessarily want, but it could be a consequence. However, my principal reason for moving this Amendment is that a great deal of new work is being added to rent officers. This Bill could lead to a diminution in confidence on the part of those who are to let furnished accommodation. This in its turn could lead to there being less accommodation, with all the consequences that that could have for people seeking it. I feel that this Amendment is one way by which justice could be seen to be done to both parties to the agreement. I beg to move.
2.53 p.m.
LORD SHEPHERD: I am sorry that the noble Baroness, with her long and notable experience and service in the Department of the Environment, should cast doubt upon the role of the rent officer in referring to possible loss of confidence if these new provisions in this Bill entail duties passing from the rent tribunal to the rent
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officer. The effect of this Amendment would be to leave protected furnished tenancies within the jurisdiction of rent tribunals for rent-fixing purposes, instead of transferring them to the rent assessment service; that is, the rent officer. Even if this proposal were desirable in itself, there would be one serious practical difficulty in the way. Noble Lords will no doubt be aware of a recent decision in the Court of Appeal in the case of Woodward v. Docherty, which has suggested that a number of tenancies which were regarded as furnished may in fact be unfurnished and thus already protected and subject to the jurisdiction of rent officers. In abandoning the distinction between furnished and unfurnished, and putting all protected tenancies within the jurisdiction of the rent assessment service, we are in effect giving statutory recognition to the situation that may have resulted from the Appeal Court decision.
The noble Baroness referred to the competence of rent officers in fixing rent. I should have thought that she would be one of the first to acknowledge that the rent officers over many years, ever since we have had rent legislation, have given a notable service both to the landlord and to the tenant. To the best of my knowledge, I have not seen any criticism of their service. A rent officer requires a degree of expertise and a degree of understanding. When she referred to two police officers, I should not have thought that their experience was something that could not be of great assistance to a rent officer. I am sure the noble Baroness will also remember that the rent assessment service now has a considerable amount of knowledge and expertise behind it. There is a central organisation, certainly in London, where knowledge is accumulated and where meetings are held for the purpose of avoiding variations from one district to another. If there is a question of confidence, there seems to me more advantage in having the rent officer procedure because here there is in fact a court of appeal; there is yet another body to which a decision can be taken, whether it is done on behalf of the tenant or whether it is done on behalf of the landlord. There is an appeal procedure beyond the rent officer, whereas under the rent tribunal system a decision is made and that is the end of it, whether the decision is right or wrong.

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In terms of numbers, the rent officers are a heavily burdened body of officials, but we believe they will be able to take on this added work, particularly in the early stages, as a consequence of the rent freeze. Nevertheless, the Government are undertaking an immediate and most careful consideration of whether the number of rent officers should be increased. We have gone into this matter with the greatest possible care. We think it is right and proper that we should now proceed to the rent officer procedure, and we believe we shall have sufficient numbers of officers with sufficient expertise, built over a long period, to give satisfaction not only to the tenant but also to the landlord—who is just as important as the tenant in this field of legislation in terms of equity.
LORD ROBBINS: Can the noble Lord give some idea of the increase in the number of rent officers necessary under this legislation?
LORD SHEPHERD: It is difficult at this moment to assess the numbers that will be required. We are, however, looking into the matter and if I can give the noble Lord some information on this matter, perhaps at Third Reading, I will do so. I myself did not specifically ask what the new numbers would be, but I have received information that we are looking at the whole problem to see what increase is necessary.
LORD LEATHERLAND: The noble Baroness was rather critical of the fact that two police officers had been appointed as rent officers. Can she tell us what were the ranks of those police officers?
LORD SLATER: I should like more clarification in regard to what determines a rent officer. What are his qualifications, and who determines what they shall be? If I were to take this matter to my wife and asked her opinion, I know she would say that the situation opens the door to criticism in regard to the rent officer who will determine what shall be the rents for furnished lettings, et cetera. I sincerely hope that my noble friend will be in a position to give us an answer as to what really determines how one qualifies to hold this appointment.
LORD SHEPHERD: I am afraid that I thought the position of the rent officer
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was so well-known that this was not an aspect that I myself should determine in detail before coming to this Committee. All I would say to my noble friend is that rent officers have been in existence ever since the last war when the first rent legislation was introduced. I said in my earlier speech that I had never yet heard criticism of the qualifications or the service which the rent officers have provided both to the tenant and to the landlord.
LORD SLATER: I hope that my noble friend will not take objection to what I am going to say in regard to the reply which he has sought to give. Like many other noble Lords attached to this Assembly, I was a member of a local authority prior to coming to your Lordships' House. We appointed rent officers. They were then known as rent collectors and they were appointed to go round these great estates that were built up by direct labour, et cetera. Their purpose and duty was to collect the rent imposed by the local authority.
LORD SHEPHERD: I think that my noble friend must have misunderstood me. The rent officer has got nothing whatsoever to do with the collection of rents. He is an official selected by local authorities. Sometimes I understand that he has some valuation experience. Certainly he has wide experience in the field of housing and his only duty is to decide what is the fair rent of the premises. It has got nothing to do with collection. It is merely an assessment of what is a fair rent both to the landlord and to the tenant.
LORD SLATER: He is going to be an assessor. He will have to assess what shall be the rent of the particular establishment which he has gone out to inspect. He will have to examine and determine what the position shall be. We ought to have this clarified, because as a past local authority man in rural authority development, I shall not be happy about this issue until I can get clarification.
LORD SHEPHERD: If my noble friend will read what I have said, this man is not a rent collector. He is, as my noble friend suggested, a rent assessor. He is an assessor of what is a fair rent on those premises which, over many years, have become involved under legislation on rents.
LORD LEATHERLAND: May I ask whether the noble Baroness is now in a position to answer the question which I put a few minutes ago about the rank of the police officers who are appointed?
3.4 p.m.
BARONESS YOUNG: I am not in a position to give any more details about these particular people, nor do I think that it is necessary to do so in order to support my case. I was not quoting them to criticise them. I have every reason for supposing that they do their job as well as they can. My point in mentioning it at all is one which I hope will answer the questions put by the noble Lord, Lord Slater. Rent officers were introduced under the Rent Act 1965, when the principle of fair rents was introduced. This is a method of calculation and, as Lord Shepherd has explained, they are there to determine what is the fair rent of a property.
Under this Bill the fair rent principle is to he extended from unfurnished to furnished tenancies. It seems to me essential that one should create the right climate in order that both parties will come to an agreement about it. We are all agreed on this principle. The fact is that there are no particular qualifications necessary for being a rent officer. One might think that they ought to be qualified in some way, either by local government experience, or housing experience, or valuation experience, but they are not. I do not know whether they have this code of guidance—the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, has not said—but I expect that they have something from the Department of the Environment. There is, therefore, the point that people may not have confidence in them when they are going to have a great deal more work added to what they already have to do. The noble Lord, Lord Robbins, asked a very good question. I was going to ask Lord Shepherd this question myself. Obviously there will be a tremendous amount more work for them to do. One of the criticisms, which I think is a real one, is the length of time which it now takes to get a fair rent assessed. This is a very important point if you are letting property. You do not want to wait an indefinite length of time before you know what the rent will be. I raise this point because one very serious issue is that
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there could be far less property to let. I am moving this Amendment because it is one way of trying to keep the confidence of both parties.
LORD AVEBURY: I am possibly the only Member of your Lordships' House who was on the Standing Committee of the 1965 Rent Bill when, as the noble Baroness has just said, rent officers were first appointed. To the best of my recollection, during the proceedings on that Bill there was no discussion of the point raised by the noble Baroness as to whether rent officers should have any formal qualifications. Probably there were very good reasons for the lack of any discussion on this point. It is hard to see at first sight what those qualifications ought to he. Among the several other headings which she mentioned, the noble Baroness said that perhaps they could be experts in the field of housing or valuation. This illustrates the difficulty. If one were to require some professional qualification, what should it be? Is not a police officer, who may have very considerable experience of dealing with the people in his own area, just as well able to understand the factors set out in the Rent Bill as somebody with a formal training in quantity surveying or some profession of that kind?
The formula in the 1965 Act, incorporated in the 1968 Act which was a consolidation measure, is of a very general nature. It speaks of
"having regard to all the circumstances and in particular to the age, character and locality of the dwelling house and its state of repair".
Anybody with common sense could interpret that formula in the light of what has been done elsewhere. The noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, mentioned that we now have very good machinery for coordination of the findings of rent officers in different parts of the country, and I think that, generally speaking, this has worked quite well. When you look at the legislation and you find that the landlords and tenants are about equal in the volume of their complaints against the system, then it is probable that a reasonable balance has been struck. I am rather surprised that the noble Baroness should have brought this point forward.
Appeal machinery was also provided, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd. If either tenant or landlord

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disagrees with the recommendation of the rent officer, then they can take the matter to a rent assessment committee. If the Conservatives were dissatisfied they did, after all, have three and a half years in which to amend the 1968 Act and to bring forward their proposals on how rent officers should be qualified. The fact that the Conservative Government failed to do this illustrates that there is no substance in the point of the noble Baroness.
LORD ROBBINS: May I add a footnote to what the noble Lord has said, and to what was said by the noble Baroness, Lady Young. I am certainly not out to make any Party point here, but it would be a matter of common agreement that this proposed legislation extends tremendously the area of assessment. The point which I would urge on the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, in which strong feelings of humanity, common sense and so on are concerned, is that a much greater element of subjectivity must enter into valuations where the furnishing and the interior of dwelling places are concerned. It is for that reason that I suspect that the noble Baroness, Lady Young, and some of us who sit on these Benches may feel that it is extremely important to scrutinise every clause of this Bill to see that it does not achieve exactly the reverse of what is intended; namely, to bring about a withdrawal from the market of accommodation which is urgently needed.
LORD SHEPHERD: May I explain to the noble Lord, Lord Robbins, and to the Committee my attitude whenever I am presented with a Bill in Committee. My officials were complaining on Friday because they wondered on which side of the fence I was falling, since automatically my nature is to be in opposition. Therefore, when the brief was put before me I questioned why we should resist the first Amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Young. My instinct was for speed and to accept the first Amendment, because in doing that one makes much progress. In the end I had to be convinced—and I was convinced—that the position that I put earlier was the right one.
First, it is said that rent officers have no experience in dealing with furnished premises. The noble Baroness knows
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that under existing legislation they are already involved, so they have experience. Therefore what they are being asked to do under this legislation is not new. It is true that there is a difficulty in terms of numbers and I was well aware of this difficulty. I do not have a note of the numbers—perhaps I should have—but I will see that the noble Lord has them at a later stage of the Bill. But I acknowledged that we are placing an increased responsibility on this service and, therefore, the service has to be adjusted according to its new responsibilities.
At the beginning I said that there was an advantage not only in using the rent officer procedure. There will now be two tiers both for the benefit of the tenant and the landlord. There will be the direct assessment by the rent officer who will go and look at the premises, but if at any time there is doubt on the part of either the tenant or the landlord then there will be the right of appeal to the rent assessment committee, and I suspect that in fact the rent assessment committee is not very dissimilar from the rent tribunal. Certainly it will have the same kind of professional service available to it as does the rent tribunal; the appointment and employment of valuation experts and the like. I suggest that the real problem is that put by the noble Lord, Lord Robbins, the question of numbers and the availability of the service to do what it is required to do under the Bill when it becomes an Act of Parliament. But I suggest to the Committee that having decided that furnished accommodation should now be treated in a similar way to unfurnished accommodation it would be right and proper to bring it within the normal assessment of a fair rent, and that is what the Bill suggests should be done through the rent officer procedure with its appeal to the rent assessment committee. I recognise the problem of the numbers and I will certainly ensure that the noble Lord. Lord Robbins, has that information at a later stage of the Bill.
LORD POPPLEWELL: Can my noble friend give any indication as to how often the rent assessment committee may meet, and also the rent tribunal?
LORD SHEPHERD: I always understood that these bodies met when the workload so demanded, in a similar way to a court of magistrates.
LORD LEATHERLAND: I regret that the noble Baroness, Lady Young, was unable to reply to the question that I put to her. I also regretted that she used the example of retired police officers to indicate that that type of person was not suitable to act as a rent officer. If the two police officers who have been appointed as rent officers happen to be retired inspectors or superintendents one must accept that they are very competent people indeed. Moreover they would have an intimate knowledge of the living conditions and the circumstances of the people on their particular manor.
I do not want to see every retired police constable made into a rent officer, but when a man has risen through the ranks of a highly disciplined force such as the police force, has passed the requisite examinations to become an inspector or a superintendent, then that man has something. Perhaps I may take a homely example, and I do so in the absence of my noble friend Lord Willis: which of us would object if Sergeant Dixon of Dock Green retired from the force and was then appointed a rent officer? He has an intimate knowledge of everybody in the district in which he operates, and I regretted that the noble Baroness tended to suggest that a retired police officer was not fit to become a rent officer.
LORD SHINWELL: Apart from the submission made by the noble Lord, Lord Robbins, on the matter of numbers—and of course that is a vital issue—the simple issue before the Committee is what are to be the qualifications of these rent officers. Apparently the noble Baroness finds policemen distasteful in this context. That is regrettable; I should have thought she might have had a word of praise for policemen. But let us consider what kind of policemen she had in mind. What information has she about the quality, the character and the period of service of these policemen? She ought not to conceal this information, and we are anxious to be made aware of it. Were the recruits "Bobbies" who had just arrived aged 19, 20 or 21—raw recruits? Were they sergeants or inspectors? Who can tell? This is what we want to know, but since she has raised this issue perhaps she will be kind enough to inform the Committee what in her view are the qualifications required.
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She referred to the matter by implication; she just mentioned the words "members of the rent tribunals", but we can rule them out, because if we are to employ lawyers for a task of this kind it will lead to more expenditure. Besides, I question whether there is a sufficient number of briefless barristers ready to undertake the task. They are really not available. What then is left? The valuers—"Ay, there's the rub". They can estimate whether the decor is worth a certain sum to be injected into the rent of the premises and they can decide whether the furnishings are expensive or inexpensive. But there is something more about the valuers: they are closely associated with the estate agent fraternity. There is a certain element of bias and generally speaking I think they would take the side of the landlord. Of course, if there is a case for the landlord, why should they not take his side?
The noble Baroness comes briefed by the Central Office, or a sub-Central Office, and she puts her case. She has not got the foggiest notion of the kind of expertise that is required; she only indulges in generalisations and that is really not good enough in an important debate of this character. So I pose these questions to the noble Baroness. Who are these two policemen with whom she has made acquaintance? Are they humble or are they superior? We ought to know, and over and above that, will she be kind enough to define, as closely as the circumstances demand, the kind of expertise that is required and the qualifications that are necessary so that we may come to a conclusion about this important matter.
LORD CLITHEROE: Have we not talked enough about this aspect of the matter, which is not really totally relevant to the point we are trying to decide. Whether the illustration given by the noble Baroness was the best that could be found is difficult for anybody to say, but the problem will be to find the people to do this work, and I do not think that anybody on either side of the House has really appreciated how difficult this will be.
LORD HYLTON: I hope that the nob!e Baroness will not press the Amendment. I have every confidence that the rent officers will be able to cope with this

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new volume of work. They have already developed very great expertise. For example, they are able to tell a housing association what will be the rent of a building not yet built, simply by looking at the plans and examining the neighbourhood. Secondly, it will be a very great benefit to the public if there can be one system rather than two for assessing rents. If my noble friend presses her Amendment, I am afraid that I shall not be able to support her.
LORD CUTHEROE: Does the noble Lord appreciate the difference between furnished and unfurnished premises? It is an entirely different problem.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: I am sure that many noble Lords here will groan and say "Here she goes again", but the noble Lord has just said that it is an entirely different problem. How much I agree with him. We have in this context to value a place which is furnished and the quality of the furnishing. I would ask noble Lords here whether if they wanted a new flat which was furnished, they would rely upon their own assessment or their wife's assessment as to the quality of the furnishing which will determine the rent. I can think of nothing better than sending a woman to see some of these flats—a woman, not the policeman we have heard about. I ask the Government to consider this point very seriously. An entirely new aspect of valuation is called for here. Most men could not go into a flat and say, "The quality of those curtains is good", or "bad". The quality of the carpets is good, or bad. They are "fitted" or "not fitted", and so on. Therefore I ask the Government, instead of showing the prejudice that they usually show in regard to the employment of women in every sphere, to recognise that this is essentially a woman's job.
BARONESS YOUNG: I should like to thank those noble Lords who have spoken in support of this Amendment. We have listened to some very interesting speeches, including that of the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, whose speeches I always enjoy. If I may make a comment, I think I once said to him in the course of our debate on joining the E.E.C. that he is one of the few Members of this House who speaks like a European, with all the
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gestures, emotionally and with conviction, and it is a shame that he will never have the opportunity of sitting in the European Parliament. Nevertheless, he has led us on a really splendid argument which I believe was totally irrelevant, so he will not be sad if I say that though I enjoyed it I do not wish to follow him all the way. I take this matter—
LORD SHINWELL: Does that mean that the noble Baroness is not going to answer the vital and salient question?
BARONESS YOUNG: I am going to answer all the important points that have been raised. I regard this as a very serious issue. We are not, if I may say so to the noble Lord, Lord Leatherland, trying to look into people's houses in order to know about their homes and the sort of people they are. We are asking someone to make an assessment of the rent.
LORD LEATHERLAND: How can you decide how much a flat is worth if you do not look inside it?
BARONESS YOUNG: If I might complete my argument, we are trying to assess a fair rent for furnished accommodation. The noble Lord might look at the Acts of Parliament which show what determines a fair rent. Perhaps I may read a summary of them:
"To have regard to all the circumstances other than personal circumstances, and particularly age, character and locality of a dwelling and its state of repair",
which the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, quoted, and something will now have to be added for the furnishing and, I hope. the services. This is a question of an agreement which has to be reached between the landlord and the tenant. The point I was making was that both parties must believe that justice will be done. The rent officer is a single person. whereas the rent tribunal consists of three people sitting together and usually it is three I named—the lawyer, the valuer and the layman. Therefore you are not relying on one individual to do this job. I hope that that indicates the kind of qualifications which I think would be very helpful.
I entirely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill. I cannot at all see why women should not be employed, and I should welcome the employment of more women to do this job.

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It would be very helpful to know, and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, when he replies to the debate, will tell us what preparations the Government have made to meet this very real problem, perhaps by additional guidance to rent officers, by the employment of a greater number, and possibly by considering the kind of qualifications that a rent officer ought to have. If he can give us some of this information he may well allay fears which exist at the present time and which my Amendment is designed to meet.
LORD SHEPHERD: I certainly wish to be helpful to the noble Baroness. In order that we can have a full understanding of what a rent officer is, perhaps we can arrange for a Question, and I will then set out by Written Answer all the qualifications that one would wish to see within the rent officer procedure. My understanding is that the basic requirement here is general sympathy, general understanding and a sensible approach. The noble Baroness spelt out some of the benefits and advantages of the rent tribunal and referred to the professional expertise that is available. The noble Baroness did not acknowledge—and I hope she will now do so—that under the procedure in this Bill this will be available on appeal, where there is a sense of grievance either by the tenant or by the landlord about a rent officer's assessment. This appeal is not available under the rent tribunal procedure. In reply to my noble friend Lady Summerskill, I would say that women are of course employed in this service. I do not have the figures for England but I will get them. But, as usual, the Scots are more forthcoming with their information and general attitude, and I understand that 10 per cent. of the rent officers in Scotland are women.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: Too little!
LORD SHEPHERD: Too little maybe, but I expect a decided advance on what we will find are the English figures. I take the point which my noble friend has put, that this is a field in which women undoubtedly have a role to play. The reason they do not play it may not necessarily be the attitude of local authorities, but the decision of the women
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themselves not to come forward for this form of work. I hope the noble Baroness will feel satisfied with this debate. The Government are very conscious of the importance of this service. We feel that the procedure outlined in the Bill with, first, the assessment and, secondly. the appeal, has all the advantages. In particular, as the noble Lord opposite has said we are here bringing furnished tenancies under the general cover of legislation that has stood the test of time and I do not think anyone would question the service which rent officers have provided to this country since 1965.
BARONESS YOUNG: I should not like to pretend that I am completely satisfied by that answer. But I shall read very carefully what the noble Lord has said, and if I am still not satisfied I shall put down another Amendment at Report stage. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
3.30 p.m.
LORD GIFFORD LORD GIFFORD moved Amendment No. 2:
Page 2, line 23, at end insert—
"(e) in section 2(3) of the Rent Act, before the word 'attendance' in each place where it appears there shall be inserted the words 'board or'."
The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendment No. 2. Before turning to the specific point of the Amendment may I, by way of preface to this and a number of other Amendments which stand in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Melchett, indicate to the Committee in essence what we have in mind by moving this afternoon quite a selection of Amendments. We do not in any sense wish to obstruct or delay the passage of this very important Bill through this House. Indeed, it is absolutely essential that the Bill passes through Parliament at the earliest possible moment so that the protection which it envisages can become secure. But for that reason, it might be of advantage if points which may have substance are raised here so that full time for consideration is available to the Government.
A great number of these Amendments deal with what we see as possible loopholes in the Bill or in the Rent Acts, as

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they will be, as a whole. This Bill takes away from unscrupulous landlords the one particularly convenient device which was available to them to let properties to tenants whom they could remove virtually at will, with only a limited amount of time lag being given by the rent tribunal. Now that that convenient method is being removed, there is absolutely no doubt that the landlords of the kind I have in mind, who make profits by letting in the poorer inner areas of cities, will be scrutinising, or their advisers will be, the Rent Acts and the Bill to see what kind of loopholes still remain. Every possible device will be employed, and it is our belief that the Bill, while in essence a very good one, does leave the way clear in a number of cases for unscrupulous landlords to exploit and thus to undermine the protection which the Bill seeks to give.
That is the case with regard to the first Amendment which I move. It concerns the provision of board, and the provision is this. Under Section 2 of the Rent Act as it stands at present, tenancies which are furnished are not protected—this, of course, will be changed—provided that the amount of furniture is substantial. Tenancies where the rent contains an element of payment for attendance are not protected, provided again that the element of attendance is substantial. Tenancies where the rent contains an element of board are not protected; but there is no requirement that the element of board should be substantial, and I would wish to ask, "Why not?" This is something which was given attention by the Francis Committee, who, on page 157 of their Report, said this:
"The reason for this omission is not apparent. The result is that there is no specific statutory requirement, in relation to protected tenancies, that in order to exempt a tenancy from protection, the value of the board to the tenant should form a substantial proportion of the whole rent. We are inclined to think that there should he such a requirement, although, presumably, it is rare for board to be provided for unfurnished tenants, and the word 'board' in itself may well import an element of substantiality."
If that Committee thought that board would necessarily have to be substantial in order to qualify as board, I think they were wrong. The leading textbook of Mr. Justice Megarry says at page 141 that
"the majority view of the courts is that the term is not confined to full board, but, subject to the de minimus rule, extends to any board."
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I have already been made aware of cases where a modicum of board—a few tea bags, a few pints of milk, or half a dozen eggs a week—is being provided by landlords, its value being only a small amount of the rent. It seems to me that so long as some board of that nature—a few cheap breakfast articles—is provided, therby the tenancy is not a protected one.
I would ask that the Amendment be accepted, for what it does is to import into the Act the requirement of substantiality. That will cover, of course, and exempt from protection the genuine boarding house and the genuine provision of bed and breakfast, because obviously the provision of a breakfast is likely to amount to 10 per cent. or 15 per cent. at least of the element of rent, and thus would be regarded by the courts as being substantial. But it is easy to foresee that false board, the board which the tenant does not want and which consists of the provision even of vending machines for coffee, is the sort of dodge which the Committee would not wish landlords to get away with. I beg to move.
3.37 p.m.
LORD SHEPHERD: Once again, this was a difficult matter to consider and to decide upon whether or not one should resist the Amendment. In the end I came to the view, with reluctance, that one would need to advise the Committee that this Amendment should be resisted. The question of board is particularly difficult. The only piece of case law one can fall back on occurred in 1923, when the Court of Appeal in Wilkes v. Goodwin was considering the first proviso to Section 12(2) of the Increase of Rent, etc. Act 1920, from the provisions of which Section 2(1)(b) of the Act of 1968 is derived, and it decided by a majority that partial board was sufficient to exclude the Act. This decision appears to have stood unchallenged for just over half a century. I think it was on this question that Sir Robert Megarry on The Rent Acts, which my noble friend Lord Gifford referred to, said that
"the dividing line appears to fall between the early morning cup of tea on the one hand and 'bed and breakfast' on the other".
It was suggested in the newspaper the other day that perhaps the installation of vending machines in accommodation might provide exclusion. My advice is that we do not think for a moment that

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in the event of a landlord incurring expenditure on such provision and maintenance in order to evade the Act, the courts would hold that the sale of food by vending machines would in fact constitute "board".
In our view, and resting on the previous decision, "board" clearly means a meal, even if not a very substantial meal, served by the landlord to the tenant. I have some sympathy with the approach of my noble friends Lord Gifford and Lord Melchett in seeking to tighten up the Bill, perhaps giving more protection to the tenant. But I would suggest to my noble friend, as I will on later Amendments, that we need to seek a balance of what is right in terms of the tenant, the necessary protection we want to give to him, without making the legislation so tight that it is so much to the disadvantage of, or such a restriction on, a landlord that the number of furnished tenancies might be reduced.
I have looked at this matter. If I may say so, this is a matter more easily discussed across a table than across the Floor of your Lordships' House. If my noble friend is still dissatisfied with what I have put to him this afternoon, I would be very ready to have further consultation with him. However, I must say to the Committee that I am advised that if we were to accept this Amendment, we are unlikely to add to the protections which already exist by court decision, because it is in the end for the courts to decide what is fair board. As I say, I am quite willing to discuss this with my noble friend, but my advice to the Committee is that we should not accept this Amendment.
LORD HALE: The football correspondent of The Times this morning felicitously recalled Jerome K. Jerome's story of Three Men in a Boat, finding himself, after very hard rowing for a very considerable number of hours, looking up and seeing the same bridge over his head as when he started to row. I have precisely that feeling. I have been through this before; I have been through this more than once. We got up in another place and said: "We must include the furnished lodging, because if you do not, a little bit of furniture will be added and the protection you are now proposing to give will be destroyed"—and everybody knows that that has happened. Now we
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say: "But you must exclude the exemptions of board because everybody knows how simple it is to avoid it".
I had not intended to intervene, because the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, put this so clearly and so fully that it is almost an impertinence to add anything from my inexperience of recent conditions. There are times when I listen to the noble Lord at the Box making exceedingly able speeches and very generous speeches and showing his own likeability, but he does run occasionally to the superlative. I did not even intervene when he said he had never heard anyone criticise a rent officer and that really he could hardly imagine such a possibility. Well, with all fairness to rent officers, somebody is bound to be dissatisfied with nearly every decision they make, however good they are. In Oldham they used to express it, and they are not really people who complain, they are people who submit. There is the lady who comes in and says: "They told me to go along and see the rent officer to get my rent reduced because it is excessive, and he has put it up". She smiles sweetly and says, "You know, Mr. Hale, it does not look as if we can win nohow". Many people feel like that. Of course, in places like that a lot of people do not even go to see the rent officer; they think it is the law, or they do not know what the law is, and they are anxious not to trouble anybody.
There is one point I want to make which I do not think the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, made. I do not regard landlords as a class with the slightest hostility. I have been a tenant myself; I have been a landlord myself, at a peppercorn rent. Noble Lords sometimes complain that there is a certain bias against landlords on these Benches—and indeed to a certain extent there is a touch of truth in the fact that of course we are biased in favour of those who cannot argue for themselves, who, when they make a contract, make it under the duress of necessity or indeed under the duress of law. Nowadays if the average decent landlord lets a property, he thinks it is wiser to have a written agreement and he buys a printed agreement. The printed agreement, of course, will be revised the day after this Bill passes, because the printed agreements are certainly made for landlords; they are not

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made for tenants. They are made to sell to the landlords, and highly respectable law stationers would think themselves negligent if they did not supply their customers' needs.
The noble Lord the Lord Privy Seal says very fairly that "board" is not easy to define. When I first came to London on being elected to Parliament, my home remained in Leicestershire for a year or two until I could dispose of it and find out whether I had a reasonable hope of re-election before burning all my boats. I was found accommodation somewhere near Petit France; I forget the name of the street. I was provided with a furnished bedroom, a cup of tea in the morning, and, after a little discussion with the charming lady who cleaned the rooms and made the beds and did all she could, a couple of slices of bread and butter specially provided for us. It was an extremely generous letting; it was a friendly letting; it belonged to a trade union, I think connected with the Post Office although I am not sure. I got it through the intervention of another Labour Member of Parliament, and so far as I know I was paying less for it than the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, who was evicted for doing something with a syphon. Clearly the bad landlord who does want to exploit will easily be able to evade this clause; he will have a written agreement to show that he agreed to supply board and that he has supplied board. Thus he can settle the question of the definition. There is still the fact that the tenant is there to get a roof over his head; he does not have much chance to negotiate and he does not have much chance to argue.
I rose really to say that while the Amendment—backed by the gifted names of the noble Lords, Lord Gifford and Lord Melchett, who have obviously looked into this matter with the greatest possible care and speak with a good deal more current experience than I have—demands attention, I want to make this point clear to the noble Lord the Lord Privy Seal. If he talks to Lord Gifford, I shall be most happy that he has done so, but he did seem to assume that this Amendment did not have widespread support and might not command widespread support. I think on these Benches it would command widespread support. I
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appreciate the great difficulty in which the noble Lord is speaking, in view of the Parliamentary system and Parliamentary time, and in view of having produced another amending Bill which amends an amending Bill and corrects a codifying Bill and so on. This makes it quite impossible for me to understand the clauses, but I think I have just enough knowledge of the law to understand them more than most poor tenants in Oldham. I hope the noble Lord will listen to what the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, has to say; he might decide to press the Amendment, but at any rate the discussion should be continuous. I hope some information will be forthcoming in time to put down an Amendment at Report stage if the discussions do not give satisfaction.
LORD MELCHETT: I wonder whether I could obtain clarification from my noble friend Lord Shepherd of what he said in reply to my noble friend Lord Gifford when he moved the Amendment. As I understood it, he was saying that provided the landlord personally supplies a full meal, albeit a fairly small meal, that would be board within the accepted definition, relying on the court case, which, as he said, is now 50 years old. Am I right then in assuming that the Government's view is that where the landlord goes slightly further than putting in a vending machine, and, for example, orders a pint of milk for each of the tenants in his premises and provides a packet of cornflakes each week and half-a-dozen eggs—all of which would involve merely placing an order with the relevant tradesmen and the landlord doing no more than that—that would suffice as a perfectly good breakfast, and that that would be board?
LORD SHEPHERD: May I say to my noble friend Lord Hale that I not only sense what the Opposition are likely to feel sympathetic to; I am perhaps more conscious of what some of my noble friends will be sympathetic to. Therefore, I approached this Amendment with a degree of caution. As I thought I indicated earlier, it is one with which I had some sympathy. There are some difficulties here. Whatever you put into a Bill—and my noble friend Lord Gifford may speak with more authority than I, as he is a barrister—and even if you put

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in the word "substantial", at the end of the day it is for the courts to decide what is meant by "substantial". I can only say to my noble friend Lord Melchett that my advice—and I think it is good advice—is that "board" clearly means a meal. It would not be sufficient to provide a vending machine, or to provide a bowl of milk outside the door for the morning cup of tea. I think that a meal would definitely be required, although not necessarily a substantial meal.
LORD HALE: Would my noble friend allow me to draw on an example of which I have had considerable experience? In order to get a drink after twelve o'clock in London at one time, it had to be served with a meal. I wonder whether he remembers what one of those meals looked like, and how much there was, because they never weighed more than two ounces. The drink was very expensive, and the company was not always very good.
LORD SHEPHERD: Having been deputy chairman of the Erroll Committee on the licensing laws, I am aware of the difficulties of defining a meal within those laws. The advice I have had is that the provision of a vending machine, or something that is quite insubstantial, would not be acceptable by the courts. As I indicated, I should be very happy to pursue this point with my noble friend Lord Gifford. But I should not wish to give him any real belief that we shall be able to meet him, because I think he will recognise that at the end of the day one may have to rest upon the courts to define what is meant by the legislation. Even if the word "substantial", or some similar word, were placed in the legislation, we should still need to fall back on the courts.
3.53 p.m.
LORD SHINWELL: If my noble friend means by his last few words that at Report stage he might find it possible to obtain a stricter definition of what is meant by the provision of a meal, I should be quite satisfied. However, I am bound to say that I wholeheartedly agree with the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Gifford. There are two sides to this question of landlords and tenants of furnished properties. To take an example, there
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are the landlords, who, with a very small financial competence, happen to possess a house with a number of flats and, who, for the purpose of maintaining their financial position, proceed to derive an income from the letting of those premises.
If one reads the advertisements in the evening papers, in particular—I shall not mention which; there is no reason why we should provide them with a gratuitous advertisement—one finds hosts of advertisements which indicate that many furnished properties are let at what are undoubtedly very low rents. I have had information conveyed to me by others who have been able to obtain furnished lettings at very low rents; the landlords and landladies have been most generous, and in some cases surprisingly generous. That is one side of the question. However, as we know—and, again, I refer to the advertisements in the newspapers—there are landlords of a quite different variety. There are the landlords who are in possession of vast properties, flats all over the place. Some of them—I shall not use the word "harassment". although it has been used on occasion and with some justification, because I do not have sufficient evidence to justify pressing the point—whenever an unfurnished fiat or property is vacant, seek to introduce a little bit of furniture, transform it into a furnished letting and charge the most exhorbitant rents.
I understand that one of the reasons why the rents of furnished properties on the higher rental side are accelerating rapidly is the number of diplomatic people in London. Most of the embassies employ vast numbers of clerks and attaches, and so on, and they can afford to pay very high rents. They are not themselves responsible for payment of rents; the rents are paid by the embassy. I also understand that the presence of Continental and American and other merchants in the United Kingdom, particularly in London, also contributes to this acceleration of rents for furnished properties.
We have to find some way of protecting all those who have to obtain furnished properties in the absence of other accommodation. I am not satisfied that this Bill goes all the way, but I understand the dilemma. After all, the Government have not been long in Office and they have had to introduce a great deal of

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legislation, some of it complicated, and some of it will have great difficulty in passing another place and your Lordships' House. This Bill has no doubt been hurriedly prepared, as I can understand, and the draftsmen have encountered difficulties because effective definitions do not seem to be available. But we have to consider the humanitarian side of this question, and I beg my noble friend the Lord Privy Seal to give the matter further consideration, and perhaps come along at Report stage with some more accurate and satisfactory definition which would satisfy my noble friend Lord Gifford.
LORD GIFFORD: To some extent, this is a lawyer's question and I certainly do not want to have Divisions on an interpretation of the law. What I urge upon my noble friend is that this matter should go back to those who advise him, in the light of the pertinent and strong comments that have been made, to see whether their advice is likely to stand up. I say this in particular, because the view that he has expressed about board needing to import at least a meal does not seem to he supported by the very authority which he has quoted—the author, Mr. Justice Megarry, saying that something less than bed and breakfast will be good enough to get by what the courts may determine "board" to be.
As my noble friend knows, I have afforded him details of one case where there was no cooking at all done by the landlord for the tenant, but the minimum requirements for breakfast were delivered toitim each week—eggs, evaporated milk, and tea-bags—which the tenant then cooked himself. That is rather more than a vending machine, but considerably less than a breakfast. Why should it not be left to the courts to determine whether this is a substantial amount of board, and not, as it was in this case, a racket?—because we have to be on our guard against rackets. It is for the courts to determine, but the requirement of substantiality has stood the test of time so far as furniture and attendances are concerned, and there is no reason why the courts cannot continue to cope with it.
The strongest reason of all why I am urging that this matter be reconsidered by my noble friend is that in the course of the debate neither he nor any other noble Lord has put forward any reason
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why the Amendment would do harm. I can quite see what my noble friend means by "striking a balance" and, if it were the case that the Amendment, by favouring tenants who deserve protection, prejudiced certain landlords, they might need to be exempted from the Rent Act; but, as I have suggested and as is not disputed, any genuine bed-and-breakfast lodging-house-keeper will be fully protected by the requirement specifying that the board should be substantial. "Substantial" does not mean anything like half or even a quarter, as the courts have interpreted it. I should like not merely the assurance that we shall talk about this matter again but that those advising my noble friend, and indeed my noble friend himself will think about the matter carefully before the Bill finally leaves this House or, at any rate, before it passes through another place.
LORD SHEPHERD: I can only say to my noble friend that, if I undertake to talk to him, clearly I shall think about the matter seriously. There are, however, as he himself indicated when he referred to the lawyers' problems, disagreements not on the principle but as to whether it is a practicality and whether it is possible in legislative form to meet the point which the noble Lord wishes to see in the Bill. However, I will with my officials certainly give the matter the most urgent and careful attention and I shall be happy to discuss it.
LORD GIFFORD: I can answer only that it is certainly possible because the Amendment does it and it is not suggested that it does not, but, with that assurance from my noble friend. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
On Question, Whether Clause 1 shall stand part of the Bill?
4.4 p.m.
BARONESS YOUNG: I have put down this Amendment, which I have already indicated to the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, I do not intend to press, because on re-reading the Second Reading debate I did not feel that the Government gave a satisfactory answer as to what they propose to do for the many people who will find themselves worse off as a result of the Bill. We have of course heard a great deal about those who will

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benefit, but his Government must feel, as we do, quite certain that as a result there will be less accommodation to let than there is at the moment and that, as a consequence of this, the various groups of people who are looking for furnished accommodation will be worse off. I have looked carefully to see what the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, said on winding up the Second Reading debate. He says, in effect, and I quote:
"In our view, the proper providers of dwellings to let are the social landlords—local authorities and housing associations." —[OFFICIAL REPORT, 10/6/74; col. 288.]
In effect, the Government are saying that the only accommodation for anybody will either be that available to owner occupiers or to council tenants or to those who are involved in some way in a housing association.
The first group of people who, I believe, will be seriously affected as a result of the Bill are young married couples. I accept that they, ideally, will want a house or at least a flat of their own, but it is most unlikely that they will be able to afford to buy one and they will certainly not be eligible for a council house as soon as they marry. I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, has figures for the average length of time couples wait on the housing list, even if they have children, from the time they put down their name to the time they get a flat. Clearly, it varies from place to place but, in areas of housing-stress—which are very much what the Bill is concerned with—the wait will be quite considerable and, for a couple who have just married and who have no children, I should think it would be numbered in years—two or three years as an absolute minimum.
The argument which the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, put forward is that the Government will give much more money for council housing and will provide money to buy the present privately rented furnished houses and flats. Leaving aside the second argument, as the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, will know, even if every single council housing committee sat down to-day and decided to build another council estate, it would take at least three years from the time of deciding to build to the time that the housing would be ready for people to move into.
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It would take considerably longer, of course, if the housing authority had to acquire the land, possibly by compulsory purchase, and had to go through all the necessary consultative and statutory procedures before it could achieve the number of houses that it wanted to build. I do not think that it is any real answer to say that the local authorities will take care of the matter. There will inevitably be a time lag—and a very long time lag—in areas of housing stress for the practical reason that in many places there simply is not the land available for the housing.
I welcome the increase in the amount of building by housing associations, but, again, I think it is optimistic to think that they will make up the backlog or, indeed, that young married couples will necessarily be able to get into one of their flats, which are not always all so cheap and are, of course, unfurnished. Almost by definition, these people will require furnished accommodation because they are starting their married life and have no furniture of their own. The second group that I think will be affected consists of young people: I already have down on the Marshalled List of Amendments an Amendment which covers, at any rate, students and those young people seeking qualifications, but one must recognise that many young people, now that they are adult at eighteen, wish to have a flat of their own and, rightly or wrongly, think this is the way to live. They too will find it difficult to obtain information and one point is absolutely certain—they will not be eligible for council accommodation. I find it difficult to believe that in the foreseeable future councils will have available flats to let to young single people. I well remember that when I was in local government I tried hard to get my own authority to build flats for older single people, particularly for single women, who often found it difficult to find suitable accommodation, and I failed every time—and I can understand why—because it was said that priority must be given to families.
The third group which will be affected are those who are changing jobs. I have no idea how many people are on the move, but in the course of the Second Reading debate my noble friend Lord Gisborough said that he let flats to

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people who were employed, for instance, on motorway building and there must be a large number of people who are changing jobs and who seek furnished accommodation until they are able to buy a house or find a home of their own. I believe that there is considerable evidence to show that people are reluctant to change jobs now, because, if they are fortunate enough to have a council house, they dare not move out since they are most unlikely to get another, unless they are fortunate enough to be able to make a direct exchange with somebody from another authority.
This means that we have become a relatively immobile society and as a consequence of the Bill we shall be even more immobile. This is a serious matter when one considers that all political Parties want to see greater economic growth because we all know that, without it, we shall not have the council houses or anything else that we want. The Bill, by making it more difficult to get temporary furnished accommodation will make it more difficult for people to move, and this could have a real consequence for industrial growth.
Thinking about the difficulties, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, will be able to tell the Committee something about the proposals which the Government may have to deal with what I think will become or could become a difficult social problem for authorities which have a large proportion of council housing and virtually no private housing. When I was in local government, one of the most difficult problems arose when a family had to be evicted from council property for non-payment of rent. The difficulty of course was that if the family were evicted, in these circumstances the children nearly always had to be taken into care, while the parents went somewhere else, with all the social consequences of that separation. On the other hand, if the family was left not paying rent, clearly all the other tenants began to think, "Why should we pay our rent if nothing happens?".
Then, of course, if one felt that it was undesirable to separate a family, it became necessary to think of some kind of accommodation to which they could be sent—or even building something—which perhaps was not as good as the council accommodation from which they
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came. It creates many problems. It is a difficult question because these kind of people are not homeless because they cannot find a home, but because they suffer from a multiplicity of problems. I do not think that anyone has yet found a solution to this. But clearly finding a solution can well become increasingly difficult when there is less choice, fewer types of housing available and when we have become a kind of society in which almost everybody is either a council tenant or an owner-occupier.
I have raised these four points because I think they are important. The first three concern groups of people who will undoubtedly suffer as a consequence of the Bill. I think it is only right that the Government should indicate how they intend to deal with these problems.
TIDE EARL OF KINNOULL: It may be for the convenience of the Committee if I speak in support of the Amendment of the noble Baroness while speaking to my Amendment at the same time. Along with my noble friend I, too, have real fears about the value of the Bill. Personally, I find most unconvincing some of the statements made this afternoon, especially those comments about landlord rackets and the urgency of the Bill. I believe the fact to be the complete opposite of the case. Everyone knows—that is, everyone who takes an interest in housing affairs—of the shortage of housing in this country to-day. Everyone knows there is a shortage of housing to buy; that there is a shortage of housing for unfurnished tenancies and everyone knows there is a shortage of housing for furnished tenancies. Why, one asks, are the Government bringing forward a Bill now which in 1971 the Francis Report considered unwise? I do not think that this point was ever answered by the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, on Second Reading. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, will later explain why the Government consider that it is right and proper now to bring forward such a Bill when the Francis Report considered it to be unwise.
I should like also to know what value the Government attach to the furnished accommodation market. Do they consider that it does a valuable job? If they consider that it has a value and they accept the Francis Report's worry about the market drying up I should certainly

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like to know who they think will replace the market. Will it be the local authorities, or who?
A third question which I should to ask the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, is what new evidence is there of hardship and harassment of tenants since 1965 and 1968 when his Party, the then Government, brought in two Housing Bills? Speaking specifically to my Amendment, the purpose of the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd—and I am sure of the Committee—is very simple. I should apologise about the drafting of my Amendment, which is in my own humble words. The purpose is to offer furnished tenants a limited security of up to 12 months, and indeed, to offer the landlords a limited confidence about their future. I hope the noble Lord may feel able to accept the principle of the Amendment which I believe goes somewhat between my noble friend's feelings—indeed I share her feelings—and the Government's purpose of the Bill.
LORD SLATER: When the noble Baroness talks about allocation of local authority houses to young people that have been married for only three years or so, is she not forgetting that we get a form of exchange from one local authority to another? We have had the Local Government Boundary Commission Report, which is now effective, and local authorities have much larger and more extensive boundaries than before. Three or four local authorities, previously units within their own right as local authorities, now have to build for the benefit of people living within their newly enlarged areas.
Another important feature is that of rents. We hear so much talk about the rent charges that have been fixed by local authorities. Who was responsible in the first place for the type of rent operation which is being looked upon as being so effective these days, where local authorities are concerned? It was not so much a Government proposal when differential rent schemes were introduced. The differential rent scheme, if my memory serves me correctly, started within the constituency that I represented for over twenty years in the other place. It was worked out on the basis of a differential rent scheme and it caused a great deal of chaos and much criticism, but nevertheless
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became adopted policy by Her Majesty's Government, which was a Tory Government at that time. The scheme has gone on.
When we talk about young people who have been married for three years, we must never forget that each local authority operates on a different form of basis. In some areas local authorities' housing allocations are based on a points system, for which one qualifies by having lived in the respective area for X number of years. In other local authority areas allocation is based on the years that an applicant has been married and living within that local authority area, and he has to take his turn in the queue. Therefore, the system differs from area to area. It is not as though it were just set out and based upon a points system or a yearly system of married life within a particular area of a local authority.
We must get this matter clear in our minds. So far as single people are concerned, another important factor is that when we talk about local authority building let us not forget that there have been many closures in big industrial sectors in this country, for example. British Railways. In my area I know that the local authority have recently, and even at the moment, had to take over streets and streets of houses that belong to British Railways—they had to take them off their hands. They did so to provide accommodation not only for the sitting tenants but also to discharge the liability of responsibility which British Railways wanted to cast to one side because they no longer had enough railway people to occupy those premises.
Not only that, but the means of alteration to many of these premises has taken up much of the time factor which the noble Baroness touched on—three years in starting and getting the land, introducing compulsory purchase of land for development, building of houses and so on. Not only does that apply to local authority building, it applies even to Post Office building. et cetera, through-out the whole ambit of operation so far as legislation is concerned. In the case of some local authorities in the area with which I have been concerned you will find that young people who have been married only three years have been able to go into empty accommodation, into council house property, as tenants;

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that is to say, they have been allocated a house after having been married for a period of only three years. On the other hand, in the case of another local authority it takes at least ten years before some applicants are able to find accommodation.
I know this is the situation in the great metropolis, in London, and I know that the great difficulties with which we are faced here are not present in many areas in the North and in the rural areas. However, I sincerely hope that while this Bill is being considered we shall not forget these important features which are relative to it, apart from what was said by the noble Baroness, who has had great experience in local government, as one gathers from the speeches that she made when holding the post that she had prior to going out of office. So far as our side, the Labour Government, is concerned, we still believe in a policy which has been condemned time and time again by the Opposition; namely, a direct-labour scheme for building local authority houses. Many of these schemes have been most effective as against private enterprise, which has been brought in to carry out certain contracts to build houses for local authority purposes.
4.22 p.m.
LORD ROBBINS: May I return for a moment to the issue of general principle which was raised by the noble Baroness? I am sure that all sides of the Committee will agree that we are dealing with a subject of great complexity, of great perplexity, when one comes to consider the detailed matters which have been touched upon by the noble Lord who has just spoken. I am sure that all of us who were not born yesterday—and, looking round, I do not see anyone who falls into that category—have heard shocking stories of the kind referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Gifford. Who of us would not wish so to shape legislation as to preclude the frequency of stories of that sort? But surely the ultimate question that one has to ask in making up one's mind whether or not to support legislation of this kind is this: will the net effect of additional legislation of this sort mean that more or less accommodation on reasonable terms is going to be available to the categories of people who seek it? Frankly, although I can see
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arguments which perhaps relate to the long period (when, let us hope, the housing problem will be less acute than it is now, and when one might regard refinements in the law of the kind contemplated here as being desirable), having regard to the real position here and now I ask the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd: does he in his heart really believe that there is no danger that, as a result of what he is doing, the amount of accommodation coming upon the market will be substantially less for a considerable period of time?
I do not wish to take up more time at this Committee stage in discussing these general principles, but the noble Baroness referred, for instance, to an extremely important category of applicants for accommodation of this sort. I refer to university students. Now I was away when the preliminaries here were under discussion, but when I heard that these matters were coming before our Committee for revision I began to make inquiries in the world in which I have spent most of my life. On the whole, the result of those inquiries is quite unequivocal. I have heard it said—and I do not know what moral the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, will draw from this—that there may be some slight bias in favour of students because some of them will be departing in three years. On the whole, the result of my inquiries, which have not been quantitatively exhaustive or anything of that sort, but which consisted just of asking knowledgeable people whose business it is to find accommodation for those young people coming up from the metropolis and seeking accommodation, is that the amount of accommodation available to them will be less. If I were a vice-chancellor beset with complaints about the insufficiency of accommodation already provided for students and anxious to be able to provide more residential accommodation of one kind or another, and knowing that in the present financial position it is not likely to be forthcoming, I should frankly be frightfully unhappy at the coming into operation of legislation of this kind at this moment.
LORD LEATHERLAND: I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Robbins, has mentioned the question, and the great difficulties, of housing accommodation

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for university students. I have some interest in this because until a few months ago I was for over ten years the treasurer of a university. The treasurer of a university occupies an honourable and picturesque post, but it is also an honorary one. Nevertheless, the post has involved a great deal of work, particularly with regard to the housing of students; and in this regard I would ask the noble Lord, Lord Robbins, to bear in mind two points. First, there are hostels which the university itself provides, and which will be dealt with later on by my noble friend Lord Annan. Secondly, perhaps a larger number of university students take up lodgings in private houses. In that event this Bill will not affect the situation at all, because the landlady will be living on the ground floor and the students will be living up above. They are not affected, either for good or for ill, by the provisions of this Bill.
I listened with very great attention to the noble Baroness. I thought she made a most reasonable, persuasive and calmly-worded speech. I was almost persuaded to say that there was a lot of sense in what she said. I will still say that, but I will add that it was not quite relevant to the point which we are now discussing; because the essence of everything that she said was that there is not enough accommodation in the country for all the people who are seeking it. Let us investigate this shortage, and see how it has come about. The last Government deliberately cut down the amount of council house building; they deliberately acquiesced in a drastic reduction of building for private enterprise. That is one of the reasons for the present shortage. I am indebted to my noble friends of the present Government, first, for granting financial assistance to the building societies to help them to provide more privately-owned accommodation and, secondly, for trying to speed up the provision by local authorities of more council housing for renting. The proposals of the noble Baroness will not provide more accommodation for people who want to take lodgings unless the existing lodger is evicted by the landlord, and it is because this particular Bill will prevent landlords from evicting tenants on that scale that I think it is deserving of support.
LORD AVEBURY: I think it was my remarks on Second Reading that the noble Lord, Lord Robbins, referred to. Then I said that the owners of furnished properties would, if anything, be more likely to let them to students than to other types of tenants because they had at least the prospect of automatic recovery of possession after three years, when the students left the university. This was in answer to the noble Lord from Edinburgh, who was telling us that more and more students were staying on in accommodation, and were likely to do so in the future, as they went on from a first degree to a Ph.D. It was news to me that more and more students are being permitted to go on to take Ph.Ds. I rather thought that in the university sector there was a cutting down of the number who were being given grants by the research councils, and that the current thinking was that more students on completion of their first degrees ought to go out to work in industry, at least for a period, before going on to a Master's or a Ph.D. But I am subject to correction from the noble Lord, Lord Robbins, who knows a great deal more about this matter than I do.
I, too, appreciate the need for accommodation for students, because I have a son at university. He is at Birmingham, where I understand the shortage of accommodation is probably greater than in almost any other university city in England, and where the charges made by landlords for students are not at all modest. I can assure the noble Lord that an adequate provision of hostel accommodation by the university would be a much more sensible solution of the problem. But one appreciates, in an area where public expenditure generally has had to be reduced to meet the economic situation, that student hostels are among the other worthy matters of expenditure which suffer.
But the noble Lord said that the fundamental question was whether the net effect of the Bill would be the provision of more or less accommodation and I should like to come back to the point that I made on Second Reading on which I can now give the Committee some further information; that is to say, what has been happening in the privately rented sector generally. The noble Baroness quoted some figures which I believe came from

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the Economist, though it was not clear what was the ultimate source. Unfortunately, what has happened is that the figures in the 1961 and 1966 censuses were not compiled on the same basis as those in the 1971 census. Therefore, any comparisons made between these three censuses give one very little clue as to what has been happening. I believe the noble Baroness said that there had been a reduction in the number of privately rented unfurnished properties, and a corresponding increase in the number of furnished properties. That indicated to her, as one might have expected, that many landlords were taking their houses out of regulation by putting some furniture in them and thereby getting them transferred to the furnished sector.
At first sight, one might get that impression, because one sees that between 1966 and 1971 in Great Britain as a whole there was a reduction of 162,000 in the unfurnished sector and an increase of 256,000 in the furnished sector. The reason for this is that in 1966 there was a large number of dwellings in the "other tenures" and "not stated" categories which included service tenancies and some others amounting to 897,000 in 1966, and that went down to only 33,000 in 1971. What happened was that there was a reclassification from "other tenures" and "not stated", which obviously went largely into the furnished sector. That is the reason why one can draw very few conclusions from the figures that the noble Baroness gave us on Second Reading. All one can do is take the three categories together—furnished, unfurnished and other tenures. We then find that over the five-year period between the sample census of 1966 and the full census of 1971 there was a decline of 770,000, or about 16½ per cent.
This reinforces the point I was making that, irrespective of whatever legislation there is on the Statute Book, as they get vacant possession landlords will sell for owner occupation, because they can obviously get a better return even if they put the money in gilt-edged than by letting off property and incurring the bother and responsibility of being a landlord. This is indeed confirmed by the evidence given to the Francis Committee by a sample of 63 landlords who were involved in rent tribunal cases in London, who were asked the question: "If
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security were granted to furnished tenants as it is to unfurnished tenants, how would this affect your furnished lettings?" Sixteen out of the 63 said that they would not continue to let at all, which reinforces the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Robbins, and the noble Baroness on the Opposition Front Bench. But I say that when they are faced with this choice of leaving property vacant or continuing to let they may come to a different conclusion.
What somebody says in answer to a hypothetical question of this kind is not always the same as what he does when faced with the actual circumstances. If he would not have sold off for owner occupation when he obtained vacant possession under the previous legislation, then, equally, it is unlikely that he will fail to continue letting the property furnished simply because this Bill has been introduced. If he has a large house with a couple of flats empty in it, what is he to do? Is he likely to sell them off? Perhaps he would do so, if he could. But to be an owner occupier of a flat in a building which is otherwise tenanted might, I suggest, be rather unattractive to a person with the money to buy rather than to rent. So it may be unlikely that the landlord will succeed in selling off piecemeal part of a building which is in multi-occupation. I think he would prefer to continue enjoying the benefit of the income he receives from that letting, rather than leaving it vacant altogether.
There is the provision, which we will come to discuss later on, for excluding landlords who live on the premises from the provisions of this Bill. There is quite a high proportion of those in London and in other stress areas, in particular. I am not saying that I agree with the provisions in the Bill which exclude those people from the scope of its application. But the landlord about whom the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, spoke on Second Reading, whose family grows up and leaves home, thus releasing a certain amount of accommodation, and who therefore performs a public service in letting off a few rooms to somebody who wants them on a short basis, will not be affected by the Bill, whether or not my Amendment or that of the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, is accepted. Those properties will remain within the furnished rented sector, whatever happens this

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afternoon or during the rest of the proceedings on this Bill.
I hope that we shall not exaggerate, as I feel the noble Baroness has done, the effect on the income of landlords or the anxieties which being a landlord may cause them, because if we adopt this tone during the proceedings on this Bill we shall indirectly produce the sort of result which the noble Baroness deplores and which the noble Lord, Lord Robbins, fears. By talking so much about the difficulties of private landlords in the furnished sector, we shall cause the decline—which is happening anyway—to accelerate.
LORD CLITHEROE: I shall not keep your Lordships more than a minute. I think I agree with everything the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Robbins said. With regard to the noble Lord, Lord Leatherland, I am not quite sure whether he interprets the Bill as I interpret it, and it strikes me that the Amendment to be moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Young—I think it is the next one—will probably correct that. I am interested in universities, as he is, and I am thinking of the university landlady who does not seem to me to have the protection that she should have under the Bill as drafted, but might have appropriate protection under the Amendment to be moved by the noble Baroness.
LORD LEATHERLAND: As I interpret the noble Baroness's Amendment which is to come on very shortly, that is to extend the implication of the protection granted by the Bill from university students to nursing students and people undergoing other courses of training. But the noble Lord will remember, I am quite sure, that the university landlady usually lives in part of her house and lets off the other part to students and is therefore not affected by the Bill.
LORD CLITHEROE: Is that the case? The noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, will perhaps tell us.
LORD SHEPHERD: I suggest that if we wait until we reach that Amendment we can deal with that matter correctly.
LORD HYLTON: Several speakers have asked what will be the net effect if this Bill is passed, and it may be of interest to mention that Shelter produced
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a report for Greater London only, suggesting that there would be 5,000 units less per year becoming available for letting if the Bill went through. That represents something like 2 per cent. of the total furnished market in Greater London, so if they are right it is not a very big fraction. Against that loss, one has to set the immense gain to those who are now accommodated and who will not be evicted but will be gaining protection.
Several noble Lords have mentioned students. I think we should be quite clear that if two, three or four students club together they can always afford a higher rent than one family and therefore they win. At the present time, by using their greater economic resources they can get the accommodation they want, at the expense of families. Several of my noble friends, quite rightly, have pointed out the decline which has been going on now for many years in the private rented sector, regarding both furnished and unfurnished accommodation. I would say only this to them: a great deal of thought has been given to this problem and mention has been made of it, for example, in the Cullingworth Report on council housing and in subsequent papers from the Institute of Housing Managers. All those who have looked at the matter very carefully are saying that local authorities, helped by the Housing Corporation and housing associations, must in future cater for the whole population in their areas, and not just for families; that they must make provision for young people, for old people, for single people and mobile people, as well as for families with children. This will require a revolution in contemporary thinking.
As regards the Amendment put forward by my noble friend Lord Kinnoull, I think there may be something to be said for having a greater security of tenure for furnished tenants than they now enjoy. There may also be something to say for "term tenancies" which specify a period of time, so that both landlord and tenant know where they stand and arrangements may therefore be made in advance, one hopes, before a tenancy terminates.
4.43 p.m.
LORD SHEPHERD: Much of the debate we have just had is perhaps more

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relevant to a Second or Third Reading of a Bill, when general principles are discussed as regards the proposals before your Lordships. If I may say so to the noble Lord, Lord Robbins, my understanding is that in the short term the passing of this Bill is likely to reduce the number of furnished tenancies. This may be only in a short term, because it is not a Bill which is in any way "anti-landlord". There are quite a number of new provisions in the Bill which in many ways make the position of the landlord perhaps more secure, or at least more identifiable. Therefore one would hope that with the knowledge and experience of the working of this legislation landlords, who do provide a very substantial proportion of homes and places for people to live, particularly for short periods, may feel themselves able to available accommodation to the general public.
I think we should all agree that the real problem here is not the Bill or its provisions, but the fact that over many years we have not built enough houses either for the private or the public sector. That is the central issue for this Government, as it was for the previous Administration. I wonder whether the noble Baroness—and since I do not wish to be provocative I should like to ask her to give this to the Committee rather than myself—would agree that at the end of three or three and a half years of Conservative Government we were in fact building fewer houses both for private and municipal occupation than was the case a decade ago. That is the basic problem which confronts any Government and also, of course, the country.
Certainly there can be no solution to the problem which the noble Baroness is putting forward until we have revitalised the building industry and provided the finance to enable the local authorities to build even greater stocks of their own and perhaps to do something which may be even more difficult—and this is something of which the noble Lord, Lord Robbins, will have greater knowledge than most of us—in other words, to bring down the lending rates of building societies and banks. This has an international implication, of course, and it would make it possible for more people to purchase their own accommodation. I think I will
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be frank with the Committee and say that in the short term I believe this Bill will make for a reduction in this field but not—and here I would agree with my noble friend Lord Leatherland—as regards students. Certainly the students who, singly or with friends, occupy institutional accommodation or are with a landlady are not really governed by a tenancy at all but by what is called a "licence" and thus are not affected by the Bill. I personally do not think that we shall see any diminution of the accommodation available to students.
I agree, if I may say so, with the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, that we should make known the real characteristics of this Bill to landlords and to all those other companies who are involved in the letting of furnished accommodation. I do not believe that they will find in it anything which, as a good landlord or as a good property owner, would he difficult or inhibiting to accept. It seems to me that the question is whether we accept in the short term a small diminution—and the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, mentioned the figure of 2 per cent., though I myself am not able to confirm or deny that—in order to give security and a sense of stability to many thousands of people who to-day live in rented accommodation and who feel that the roof above them does not represent a home in the true sense but that it could disappear from above them without any great difficulty. I believe it is a political judgment (with a small p) as to whether this Bill should pass. I can only say to the noble Lord, Lord Robbins, that my political judgment (again with a small p) is that I would accept a small diminution of availability in accommodation in order to provide a really increased sense of security and stability for all those hundreds of thousands of young men and women who to-day live in rented accommodation.
BARONESS YOUNG: I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, for his reply. It has been worth putting down this Amendment, if only to get the noble Lord to say that the Bill is not meant to be "anti-landlord". I say that because I have had a shoal of letters which I am still attempting to answer, and I have seen two deputations of upset people who let, not on a large scale, but perhaps one or two houses, who

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are certain that this Bill is simply aimed at driving all private landlords out of the market. It is important in public life to try to hold a balance and to be fair to all sections of the community. Of course there are bad landlords, but there are also good ones. There are bad tenants as well as good ones, too. When one is considering all these matters, one must make quite sure that one is trying to be fair to all sections of the community so that one will not be accused of being prejudiced against one group of people.
I should like to thank the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, for speaking to his Amendment at the same time because its purpose is the same as mine; that is, to draw from the Government how they propose to meet the difficulties that this Bill will create. I can only say to some of the other noble Lords who have spoken and, in particular, to the noble Lord, Lord Slater, that I understand the point that has been made. I, too, had fifteen years in local government. I know how housing committees work and I know that there are different points schemes; but I cannot see that the Local Government Act 1972 will help the situation. It created larger authorities, but the districts remain the housing authorities. The real point of argument was the triumph of hope over experience. Local authorities can do an enormous amount to meet specific needs. In my opinion, in the foreseeable future they are not going to meet the needs of any of these three groups of people that I have identified. I am sure the noble Lord will agree with me, if he thinks about it, that they will certainly not meet these needs in areas of housing stress. I do not know the situation in the North-East; it may well be that you can put your name down on a council house list and get a flat within six months. But that must be one of the few areas of the country where that is possible. I am talking about groups of people for whom I do not believe local authorities will cater.
I listened with great care to what the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, said. It seemed to me that what he was saying was that my point was probably true, and that there would be less accommodation to let. But although landords
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have been asked by the Francis Committee whether they will continue to let and they have said that they will not, we need not necessarily go by that because it is hoped in the future, as a result of all this, that they will continue to let. That, again, is a triumph of hope over experience. I do not think he has produced any evidence that any of the groups of people that I have indicated will be helped.
LORD AVEBURY: What I said was that 16 out of the 63 landlords questioned— and it is important to remember that it was a rather special group of landlords who were questioned—said that they would not continue to rent. I said that it was likely that a smaller number would take up the decision if faced with the need to decide on the spot and not in response to a hypothetical question.
BARONESS YOUNG: I do not think that that invalidates my argument at all. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, said the landlords were asked a hypothetical question and gave an answer. He is now saying—and this is another hypothetical point—that if they were confronted they would give a different answer. We do not know; we do not have the evidence. We only have the evidence of what is happening— that there is less private, unfurnished accommodation to let. Now everybody is agreed that there is going to he far less furnished accommodation available.
LORD ROBBINS: May I interrupt the noble Baroness to add a grain of evidence to her argument? This is not hypothesis. In one educational institution in London the officer responsible for accommodation of students has recieved telephone messages from landlords in this particular position saying that they propose to sell.
BARONESS YOUNG: I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Robbins, for that intervention. I hope he will be able to produce these figures when we debate my next Amendment which is specifically to deal with this point. It adds to the general point I am making, and I am grateful for it.
I should like to try to answer the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton. He has rightly summed up this Bill. I

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accept that there will be people who will he helped. There are obviously those at present in furnished accommodation. I do not think he is being fair when be says that few people will suffer. I have read carefully the memorandum circulated to me by Shelter. I do not know whether we are working from the same set of figures, but in the last paragraph on the first page of the document it says:
"It must be remembered that of 80,000 furnished tenants in London, 27 per cent. of all tenants rent from resident landlords."
They are the people who will not have protection under this Bill. Therefore I should have thought that slightly over 70 per cent. will. If the landlord, as a result of this Bill, decides to sell the property, this will cause a diminution in the supply of furnished accommodation. This is a matter which perhaps I could discuss with the noble Lord at some other time. We do not have any other figures on which to work, except those that have been circulated in this particular memorandum.
I indicated to the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, that I would not press this Amendment; but I hope that I have said enough so that those who continue to take part in the rest of this stage and the other stages of the Bill will realise that this is a serious matter, and that a considerable number of people will find it much more difficult to find accommodation in the future than they do now. We think that there will be considerable suffering as a result of this Bill.
LORD LEATHERLAND: Before the noble Baroness sits down, may I ask her to elucidate a little more her last reference, which was to the 70 per cent. or so of tenants who might find the house or block of flats sold over their heads? Will they not be protected tenants? Will not the landlord therefore have difficulty in selling with vacant possession? Will not the protection continue after the landlord has sold to the new owner?
BARONESS YOUNG: What the noble Lord, Lord Leatherland, is saying is that this group of people will be protected, and that I accept; that is what the Bill says. I have indicated that a great many people will benefit. What we were trying to elucidate—and it is difficult to get figures on this—was the number of people
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who would not be helped. I have quoted three groups. They are either in furnished accommodation at present, or are about to look for it. There will be less furnished accommodation to let because the group of people who will probably give up letting furnished accommodation as soon as it becomes possible to do so will be the approximate 70 per cent. whose tenants would be given security under this Bill. That was the group of people that I was talking about.
Clause 1 agreed to.
THE EARL OF KINNOULL: I thought we were still on my Amendment. I have one brief question on Clause 1. It concerns the words of the clause—
LORD SHEPHERD: Just to be sure that we are correct, the Question, "Whether Clause 1 shall be agreed to?" has been put. If the noble Earl has a particular point concerning the clause, if he would like to see me afterwards, I should be happy to deal with it. The Question has been put and it would be difficult, within our procedure, to go back, although I want to be helpful. If the noble Earl would like to see me afterwards, I should be happy to help him.
5 p.m.
THE EARL OF KINNOULL THE EARL OF KINNOULL: Moved Amendment No. 3:
After Clause 1 insert the following new clause:
". A protected tenancy in this Act shall refer to a protected furnished tenancy, and any such tenant under a protected tenancy shall deem to have been granted up to 12 months security of tenure beyond the term of a written agreement."
The noble Earl said: I have already stated the gist of my case regarding this Amendment to the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, and I do not intend to repeat that. When the noble Lord replies I wonder whether he would answer a small question which concerns Clause 1. It says that rental should include payments in respect of the use of furniture. For many years it has been the basis of assessing furnished rentals that part of the rental is for the accommodation and part for the furniture. As the noble Lord will know, in the courts there has been some disparity as to what percentage of the rent should represent furniture. Indeed,

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according to Sir Robert Megarry's textbook, the Francis Report stated:
"The Court of Appeal has expressed the view that in the absence of special circumstances 20 per cent. or more of the whole rent is a substantial portion for this purpose. Less than 15 per cent. is not. Anything between it is a borderline case. However, the House of Lords has said that it is for Parliament and not for the courts to lay down any percentages that may he required."
In a recent case the courts took the view that 8 per cent. was a substantial part and was sufficient to represent the furniture. I should like to ask the noble Lord whether he can comment as to why no percentage has been written into the Bill.
LORD SHEPHERD: We have not put in a percentage because it would be undesirable to do so. It is far better in our view, as in previous legislation, to leave this as a matter for the courts on which to exercise their judgment. In regard to the noble Earl's Amendment, this is very much in line with the debate we had on Clause 1. I can only say to him that we could not accept it in one sense. To grant twelve months, as the Amendment suggests, already duplicates what is for many an existing right, since they enjoy indefinitely their contractual tenancy. If the noble Earl's intention is—I am not sure whether it is—to limit this to twelve months, this would go quite contrary to the whole spirit of this piece of legislation. I hope the noble Earl will not press this Amendment to a Division.
THE EARL OF KINNOULL: I am glad to report that I do not intend to press this Amendment to a Division, but perhaps on the next occasion we can discuss this matter yet again. What I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, is that I think I am correct in saying that under the present legislation a tenant does not have twelve months; in fact, he has up to six.
LORD SHEPHERD: If the noble Earl will look further on in the Bill he will find that we have provided that the rent tribunals can now extend the period after a notice to quite from six months to twelve months. We have also given the rent tribunals the power to extend this even further on application.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 2 [Certain tenancies not to be protected]:
5.3 p.m.
BARONESS YOUNG BARONESS YOUNG moved Amendment No. 4:
Page 2, line 29, leave out from ("pursue") to second ("or") in line 32 and insert—
"—

(i) a course of full-time instruction at any university, college, school or other educational establishment or institution,

(ii) a course provided or approved under section 2 of the Industrial Training Act 1964 as amended by the Employment and Training Act 1973, or any service contract, apprenticeship or further education associated with any such course, or

(iii) a course of study leading, to any of the following—

entry on the roll kept under section 2 of the Midwives Act 1951,

registration under section 7 of the Medical Act 1956,

admission to the register or roll maintained under section 1 of the Nurses Act 1957,

registration under section 2 of the Dentists Act 1957,

registration under section 2 of the Opticians Act 1958,

registration on any register maintained under section 2 of the Professions Supplementary to Medicines Act 1960,

registration under section 2 of the Veterinary Surgeons Act 1966,

admission under section 1 of the Solicitors Act 1974,

qualification to practice any other specified profession;".

The noble Baroness said: I beg to move this Amendment, which I regard as a very important one. I believe it will remove the three anomalies which now appear in Clause 2(1)(bb). I should like to begin by giving apologies from my noble friend Lord Balerno, who much regrets he is unable to be here this afternoon. At Second Reading he explained the great difficulties that students in universities and polytechnics will find themselves in if this Bill becomes law as it stands. The first anomaly in Clause 2 is that only those students living in accommodation provided by specified educational institutions will be exempted from the provisions of Clause 1; namely, security of tenure for all furnished tenancies. If, as everyone agrees, there will be less furnished accommodation to let as a result of the Bill, then thousands of students, who at present arc not living in

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specified educational institutions but in flats let privately, will be in great difficulties as this supply of accommodation begins to dry up, and they could well find themselves with nowhere at all to live.
My noble friend Lord Balerno has given me the estimated figures for Scotland. Although in the shortness of time since the publication of the Bill it has been very difficult to get very accurate figures, it is thought there are 5,000 such students in Edinburgh. This includes Heriot Watt university and colleges of art and of education
LORD SHEPHERD: Are these tenancies or are they licences?
BARONESS YOUNG: I am referring in all these cases to students who are private tenants of private landlords; that is to say, students who are not living in hostels or in accommodation provided by the university. In Glasgow there are about 2,000; this includes Strathclyde university. At St. Andrew's the figure is 500 which includes Stirling university. In Aberdeen it is 15,000, and that includes the colleges of art and education and technology. So, altogether there are about 9,000 in Scotland. I made inquiries in Oxford, and it is thought that between the university and the Oxford polytechnic there are probably about 5,000 students living in this kind of accommodation. I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Robbins, can supply us with some information about the numbers of students in London, and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Annan, if he speaks to this Amendment, will do the same. I hope therefore that I have said enough to indicate that this is a very real problem of considerable magnitude.
I noticed an article in the Daily Telegraph of June 17 headed: "Digs crisis faces students", which said:
"Universities will face their worst ever accommodation crisis when term starts in October, Vice-Chancellors said yesterday. Only 4,000 extra hall of residence places have been built this year instead of the 10,000 originally planned. This is because of the Government's spending restrictions".
The article continues:
"One Vice-Chancellor said, 'If students realise the potential seriousness of the situation and take steps to find accommodation early, we may get through without a major crisis, but it will be touch and go'."
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The second paragraph is relevant to this debate because it assumes that a great many students, an even greater proportion than do now, will have to find private accommodation.
It may well be thought that one answer to this is that there should be more purpose-built accommodation. I have no doubt at all that that is true. But it ignores three important factors. The first factor is the cost of providing purpose-built accommodation for every student in every university and polytechnic. Secondly, there is the problem of the acquisition of land in suitable places. There must be (although, here again, I have not had time to check on every university) a good many universities which would find it impossible to acquire land close to their university buildings or suitably sited for students. Last of all, but just as important, that answer ignores the wishes of students themselves. Whatever we may think of the modern trend, students do not want to be in what they regard as a paternalistic setting. They regard themselves as adult at 18, and like to live on their own. They do not like the feeling that senior members of the university may be, as it were, looking over their shoulders—even though I am sure few of them have enough time to do that. So there is this great trend towards students having flats on their own.
It may be said, as the noble Lord. Lord Avebury, and the noble Lord, Lord Robbins, said, that landlords and landladies may well prefer. as a consequence of the Bill, to let to students. This may well be true, but what we do not know is how many students, most of whom by definition will be temporary tenants, will choose to move out at the end of their university course. Many may in any event want to stay on through the long summer vacation. Then, the good landlord who tries to put the flat or house in order and decorate it will find as soon as one group of tenants has left that there is no gap in which to do the necessary repairs because another group has come in. I have tried, but have been quite unsuccessful in getting the numbers of under-graduates who are now married. But I should be surprised if the numbers are decreasing. These are students who might well like to stay put, provided they

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find themselves in accommodation which is suitable.
Furthermore, postgraduate students in my experience are nearly all married. Quite a number of them have children and, naturally enough, if they find somewhere suitable they will be quite likely to stay on for a considerable time. Some under-graduates, notably science undergraduates if they go on to do a postgraduate degree, could be in a university for six or seven years and therefore would be tenants for a considerable time. I hope, therefore, that I have said enough to indicate that this is a problem of numbers of students up and down the country who will be seriously affected if the Bill becomes law. Therefore, I believe that an extension to Clause 2 is essential and that my Amendment does this by removing any limitation on the landlord who grants a tenancy under Clause 2(1)(b).
The second anomaly of this clause in the Bill is that few young people will be helped by this subsection. It refers only to
"a person who is pursuing or intends to pursue a course of study … "
provided by a specified educational institution. The second anomaly is, of course, that there are many young people pursuing all kinds of courses of study which are not defined. I accept that Clause 2(4) says that the Secretary of State will make regulations to define those institutions to be covered, but it seems to me that this is not good enough, because many people will want to know now whether they are to be covered or not by this. Therefore the second anomaly of Clause 2 is removed by my Amendment because it indicates the very large number of other courses that young people could be following. While they are taking these courses they will be looking for furnished accommodation to live in because the probability is that they will be following these courses away from home.
The first paragraph covers university students. As it indicates the second paragraph is taken from the Industrial Training Act 1964. It covers a great many people. Section 2 of the Industrial Training Act allows industrial training boards to provide courses, to approve courses, to assist persons in finding facilities for
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being trained for employment in industry. Therefore it covers a large category of people who will be doing various forms of industrial training leading to quite particular technical qualifications in industry.
The third paragraph applies to the various medical professions. On Second Reading I quoted nurses as an example of young people who frequently live in furnished accommodation in the course of their training and who will, therefore, find it very difficult to find any similar accommodation if this Bill becomes law.
Finally, there is a provision that any other group of students who may not be covered by all these specific recommendations can be so covered by regulations made by the Secretary of State. I feel that this is a much stronger and more widely drawn Amendment to this clause and strengthens the clause by making it possible for young people to find furnished accommodation. It brings into this group far more young people than those very narrowly defined in the first part of the clause. I think that it should be of enormous benefit to a group of people who, as I have already indicated, will find themselves in great difficulties as a consequence of this Bill.
In conclusion I should like to make it clear, as I am sure the Committee realise, that this Amendment was not drafted by myself but by my noble friend Lord Colville. Therefore I have considerably more confidence in it than I would have in the drafting of the Amendment by myself. I say this because I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, will look at this very seriously. I think that he would agree with me that this clause is an anomaly in the Bill; that it will be very difficult for many people to interpret it; that it is going to have very serious consequences for a great many young people, students in particular. Therefore I hope that he can say that he will accept it. I beg to move.
5.15 p.m.
LORD SHEPHERD: If I were to intervene here I might be able to help the noble Baroness. I may not be able to help her too far, but at least I can make a gesture towards here. May I also congratulate her or her noble friend on the manner in which they have carried out their research. It must have been a formidable undertaking. As introduced,

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the Bill excludes from full protection tenancies granted to students by educational institutions specified by regulations made by the Secretary of State.
I think that we should be quite clear about the limitations of this part of the clause. The effect of this Amendment would be to widen this limited exemption so as to embrace almost anybody engaged on a course of study or vocational training. It would specify the exemption classes in the Bill rather than in regulations and, as drafted, it would exclude from any protection any tenancy granted to a student rather than merely a tenancy granted by a specified institution. Quite apart, however, from the problems of definition and interpretation to which the Amendment gives rise, there are a number of serious objections to what the noble Lord and the noble Baroness are proposing.
Paragraph (bb) in Clause 2 of the Bill was drafted to take account of a situation which I think I should point out is believed to be comparatively rare—where universities and colleges have granted furnished tenancies to students for whom your Lordships will readily agree full Rent Act protection would scarcely be appropriate. This Amendment goes far beyond the strictly limited exemption that we are proposing. It would exclude from protection virtually anybody pursuing a course of study or training for a trade or profession, whether he was renting accommodation from an institution at which he was studying or from a private landlord. It would appear to mean that anybody studying for any professional qualification could not be a protected tenant, no matter where he was living. If we were to accept this proposal, we should be accused, I think quite rightly, of discriminating against a class of person simply because they were furthering their education, and I am quite sure that nobody on any side of the Committee would wish to be open to this charge.
This part of the Bill does not in any way deal with private accommodation. I sought earlier to explain the position, as I see it, of students seeking outside accommodation. This part of the Bill deals merely with accommodation that is provided by institutions. It would appear from the Bill that what was originally in mind was that the institutions would
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be those within what one might call the public field—the universities, the colleges, the polytechnics. But it has been put to me that there may be a number of private institutions which either provide both education and accommodation on the site or arrange accommodation themselves but within the private field. I want to say to the Committee that it is not our intention that these institutions should be included or that there is any question of treating the public accommodation in a different way from the private. We have sought in the Bill to do this by specification of tenancies and to have this in a Regulation in order to have flexibility. I can assure the Committee that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science will be open to discussion with any institution which may feel that they may be affected, in order that if there is a real case to be met those private institutions could be included in the Regulations.
I thought the noble Baroness went a good deal further than the particular subsection in the clause, and I think on reflection she will agree that we are dealing here with the question of the institutions and not that of the provision of flats. I know that many students like living in flats. My younger son is already embarking on that next term in his second year at university, and I must say that when I see some of those whom he has around him who will be tenants I really wonder whether I should be willing to be the landlord! But there it is. They are embarked upon this venture and so is the landlord. The difficulty here is that local authorities have their major demands placed upon them by those who are on their waiting lists, and the noble Baroness herself referred to that earlier. I suspect that one of the consequences of this Bill—and I will be frank about it—is that the furnished flat accommodation for students is likely to be shorter and therefore there will be a need for students to move into furnished accommodation with a landlady. Here my understanding is that we are not then in the field of tenancy but of licence, which is not dealt with in this part of the Bill.
I have sought to deal with the Amendment and—I will not say its shortcomings. because it is too early at this stage of the Committee and I do not want to cross

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the noble Baroness too soon. It is on account of some of the difficulties that would confront us if we were to accept the Amendment that I have sought to be forthcoming in regard to the private institutions which may feel that they have not been included. I hope that with that explanation the noble Baroness will feel that the work put into this Amendment by her noble friend Lord Colville of Culross was not entirely wasted (because we have had a debate), and that she will now be willing to withdraw the Amendment.
5.23 p.m.
LORD ANNAN: I wonder whether it would be helpful if I were to speak on this Amendment and not on Amendment No. 10 which is tabled in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Hampstead. It is really on the same subject. Like the noble Baroness, I must at once admit that my Amendment was drafted by me. She has said that her amendment was drafted by the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, and mine was drafted by the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd, and that may he the reason for the seemingly tortuous, incomprehensible form of the Amendment I hasten to say that the mind of the noble Lord cannot be described by those adjectives; it is pellucid. The reason of course, is that the very nature of rent legislation makes any Amendment, even on a comparatively simple point, appear impenetrable.
May I try to explain my point in very simple language. As the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, said a moment ago, for the first time Her Majesty's Government are applying rent protection to furnished tenancies and have, if I may say so, very sensibly exempted from this control a number of special cases. The only one with which I am concerned, of course, is that of tenancies granted to students by educational institutions. The reason for this exemption is the obvious one that has been mentioned already: the very essence of student accommodation so provided is its ephemeral character and therefore it would be positively undesirable if tenancies of this character were subjected to statutory control. That is why, as the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, said, the exemption has been provided for under Clause 2(1)(bb) of the Bill.
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Naturally, the universities are extremely grateful for this understanding, but unfortunately if the Bill is enacted in its present form the very point that Her Majesty's Government wanted to achieve may well be defeated. The reason for this is simple. The present exemption applies only in the case of a tenancy in the legal understanding of that term. In practice, universities and similar institutions invariably and quite naturally grant to their student occupants not a tenancy but a licence to occupy the relevant premises. Licences to occupy do not in any event fall under the ordinary Rent Act control, either in the case of unfurnished or furnished lettings, and therefore the exemption as at present provided for may well be irrelevant to some of the problems which universities and other institutions face.
As those of your Lordships who are familiar with rent legislation will be aware, furnished lettings have always been treated separately, and while they are not subject to normal Rent Act control they come under the limited and rather special form of control that was first introduced, so I understand, by the Furnished Houses Act 1946, which will now be found to be re-enacted as Part VI of the consolidating Rent Act 1968. Since some of your Lordships—and I certainly was one of them—may not be too clear on this point, I must explain that control under the 1946 Act enables the tenant to apply to a rent tribunal to have his rent adjusted and registered, and there are also provisions for giving him a very limited discretionary security of tenure. I should also explain that control under the 1946 Act applied not just to tenancies in the strict sense but to any contract conferring the right to occupy a dwelling. Therefore such controls apply in the case both of the tenancy and of the more tractable licence.
As the student occupier is in fact almost invariably a licensee it follows that if the exemption introduced in Clause 2 of the present Bill is not also extended to confer a similar exemption in the case of contracts for the letting of a furnished dwelling, the commendable aim of Her Majesty's Government to give effect to the special situation of universities in this matter may well prove ineffective. So the simple purpose of

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the Amendment which we are now discussing and of Amendment No. 10 is precisely to provide the same exemption in the same terms as conceded in regard to Rent Act control in the case of furnished licensees, to which the 1946 Act system of control would otherwise apply.
I should perhaps explain that the reason why it is undesirable that even the limited control under the 1946 Act should not be applied in the case of university students is that so far as security of tenure is concerned there is clearly no case at all for giving ephemeral occupants in this category some form of statutory security. Parliament certainly could not have contemplated such cases when the 1946 Act was introduced. So far as rents are concerned, the universities, who are required to break even on their special charges, therefore find themselves in a ludicrous situation. If the rents charged are subject to a separate system of registration, the universities cannot fulfil the obligations which the University Grants Committee has laid upon them. That is the obligation to break even and not subsidise students' residences from their block grant. So we are in a corner and we do not know how best to proceed.
So may I submit that the Amendment which I have in mind, and also that tabled by the noble Baroness, is completely sensible and justified in the circumstances. It does no more than give effect to what must, one should have thought, be the underlying purpose of Clause 2 of the present Bill. Lest any noble Lord might think that I am urging the point from the biased standpoint of the Vice-Chancellor's Committee, this question was fully explored by the Francis Committee. Their massive Report on the Rent Act was presented in March, 1971, and is referred to as Cmnd. 4609 of that year. In chapter 28 of that Report, on page 164, the Committee discussed various exemptions from Part VI of the Rent Act 1968, and in particular referred to student lettings. In the case to which I am now referring, namely, lettings of accommodation owned by universities and institutions of higher education, the Committee stated categorically, and I quote their actual words:
"Our view is that such lettings, if unfurnished, ought not to be protected, and, if furnished, ought to be exempted from Part VI."
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It follows therefore that this whole question has already been subjected to very full study by a highly qualified Committee which reached this unqualified conclusion, which, so far as I am aware, has not since been contested. This is the purpose of the Amendment in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Hampstead, and if the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, could give an assurance that this particular point would be considered I should be very happy to let the matter rest there.
LORD CLITHEROE: May I ask the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, to explain to me what exactly is meant by Clause 2(1)(bb)? There are in the county in which I live a number cf educational establishments. Until April 1 there were four universities, but now only one, but each depends on lodgings for the accommodation of students. When I was an undergraduate I was myself a tenant. Can the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, say what is the position now of a student in a university who is a tenant? Is the person who is his landlord protected or not protected? That is the simple question I put.
LORD LEATHERLAND: As I spoke about university students earlier in the debate I do not wish to repeat what I said on that occasion. I want to ask an innocent little question in order to seek knowledge. I know a young lady who is thinking of training as a nurse. At the present time she will probably be put into the nurses' home at the hospital where presumably she will enjoy security of tenure, so long as she behaves herself, of course. If we accept the Amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Young, that protection will be removed from her. Could my noble friend clarify the position? He will probably be able to tell me that residence in the nurses' home is a kind of licensed residence and therefore she will be protected to that extent. The position of this young lady must be typical of thousands.
LORD HAWKE: I support my noble friend Lord Clitheroe in asking for elucidation. I am absolutely bemused by torrents of words on this matter and I must plead complete ignorance of the existing state of undergraduates, the state under the Bill and that under my noble friend's Amendment.
5.34 p.m.
LORD SHEPHERD: I will do my best to answer the questions. If the young lady whom my noble friend Lord Leatherland has in mind becomes a student nurse in one of our teaching hospitals and occupies accommodation belonging to that institution—or to any other institution, because we should like to see an exchange and interchange of accommodation—she would, in 99.999 per cent. of cases, be under a licence. When she has completed her studies the institution would be able to require her to leave the premises. That is the object of Clause 2(1)(bb). Thus, when a student goes into a university there should be no question about his leaving the premises when he has completed his course. My understanding is that a student who lives in such premises as the young lady training in hospital would be under a licence; but we have included paragraph (bb) because there is just a small chance that some university or other educational institution may have granted tenancies. By excluding this part of the Bill we do not wish to make it possible for a student, who may be there on a tenancy and not under a licence, to have permanent occupation of accommodation in an educational institution. That is the purpose of paragraph (bb). So far as I know, it has nothing whatever to do with private accommodation outside the institution.
I must congratulate my noble friend Lord Annan for—I will not say, jumping the queue, but certainly on having taken the opportunity of putting his Amendment forward in the hope that I would accept it. No doubt he will enjoy a quieter supper than he would perhaps have enjoyed in your Lordships' House if he had remained in order to move the Amendment. I very much regret that I cannot accept his Amendment. Clause 2(1) of the Bill excludes from full Rent Act protection tenancies granted to students by educational institutions. Part VI of the 1968 Rent Act applies only when persons are granted a right to occupy a dwelling as a residence. These words show some intention to restrict Part VI to cases where furnished premises are occupied as a home. It is arguable that in the normal case a student's residence is at his own home.
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It is understood, however, that some rent tribunals have been prepared to accept the jurisdiction over lettings by educational institutions and to fix rents paid by students. Their right to do this has not, so far as is known, been tested in the courts which are the final arbiters on whether a rent tribunal has jurisdiction in any individual case.
It seems to us rather strange to include in a Bill, the main purpose of which is to protect the rights of tenants, a provision that would expressly remove a right which students already have. Such a provision would be considered inequitable and might be widely regarded as an act of discrimination against students by the Government. We believe it is right that students should not be given security of tenure, but we thing it not inappropriate that they should have the rent fixing procedures available to them. We are not giving it them; they have already acquired it by the decisions of a rent tribunal, and the Government do not feel that they would be justified in removing what is an apparent right to-day.
LORD CLITHEROE: The noble Lord has not answered my question. What is the position of a student who is in a lodging in a unversity? This applies to a very large number of students in many universities. Is the landlord of the student protected, or is he not?
LORD SHEPHERD: If I may say so, I thought I had answered the noble Lord. The noble Lord asked: "What is the position of a sudent in lodgings in a university?" My understanding of that was lodgings in the university. Is that what the noble Lord had in mind?
LORD CLITHEROE: No. One can have either lodgings in college, which means one has rooms in college, or one can lodge with a private landlord, be the tenant of a private landlord somewhere. If one is the tenant of a private landlord, is the private landlord to be protected? He should be, otherwise other students will not be able to come there.
LORD SHEPHERD: If the noble Lord will refer to Schedule 2 to the Bill, he will see that here we are dealing with furnished tenancies where the landlord is an occupier. I think that is what the noble Lord had in mind. The noble Lord will see there that under Part VI

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of the Rent Act the landlord has a special position. I speak now with some confidence, but I do not think there is any difficulty in the landlord being able to bring the licence to an end as and when he so wishes, by having given the proper notice.
LORD CLITHEROE: The noble Lord used the word "licence". I used the word "tenancy".
LORD SHEPHERD: I think it may be one and the same thing. My understanding of the word "licence" is the agreement between a tenant and a landlord on the basis of lodger or boarder, where there is not a complete right to a particular individual dwelling place. But I will look at the point the noble Lord has put, because I agree with him that one wants to be quite clear. I think I can give the noble Lord a very clear assurance that the student—I have been passed a piece of paper, and perhaps this may help. It says: "Licences to occupy. It has been held by the High Court that Part VI of the Act can apply to a licence which meets the conditions of Part VI"—I am sorry, I had better come back to this at a later stage. I cannot read it.
LORD CLITHEROE: May I thank the noble Lord. I just wanted to give some assurance to the landladies in Morecambe.
LORD SHEPHERD: The assurances I have given will stand up to examination. There is no difficulty here, but the part of the Bill we are dealing with is that in regard to institutions.
LORD LEATHERLAND: While thanking my noble friend for the satisfying reply which he gave to my question about the young lady who wants to train to be a nurse, I ought to add, in order that suspicions may be removed, that the young lady is my granddaughter.
LORD WYNNE-JONES: I have been slowly and painfully struggling towards what may be an understanding of this clause. I do not know whether I have reached the point, but I should like to raise one matter which may merely show that I have completely misunderstood it. If one looks at Clause 2(1)(bb), one finds
"the tenancy is granted to a person who is pursuing or intends to pursue a course of study …".
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My noble friend the Leader of the House has been pointing out that most of the students will not require the protection of this clause at all, or the institution will not require it, but that there are a few, very few, which I think my noble friend put at 0.0001 per cent.—
LORD SHEPHERD: May I say that we do not even know who they are, but are merely putting it in as protection.
LORD WYNNE-JONES: That is precisely why I raised this matter, because there are some habitations which have been built by universities. I happen to know of one where a number of flats were built by the university out of private funds, not out of University Grants Committee funds because the University Grants Committee will not give money for this purpose. In the university of which I am thinking, these amount to about 20, and were built for married postgraduate students. I imagine these come exactly under this particular clause.
What slightly worries me is the phraseology, "to pursue a course of study". These flats are meant for research students. I know that sometimes research is referred to as a course of study, but when one is thinking in particular of research students in the fields of science, medicine and technology, there is no study in the ordinary sense, in the undergraduate sense. These people are actively pursuing research work. I should like to be satisfied that the word "study" will not be used in a restrictive way, because it seems to me perfectly clear that the intention here is that any student occupying a university flat, while he is an undergraduate or a post-graduate student, is really in this kind of contractual position with the university. Can the noble Lord tell me whether or not I am right in my interpretation?
LORD SHEPHERD: I can give the noble Lord, Lord Wynne-Jones, that assurance. My understanding is that the word "study" would cover those who were doing research. So I can give that assurance to my noble friend.
LORD HAWKE: I thank the noble Lord for that reply. He has certainly cleared up one point; that in the Year 1922/23 at No. 2 Kings Parade, Cambridge, I was the licensee. But I understand that the modern generation is not content with that. As the noble Lord

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said earlier, students go in for renting flats. Presumably, the landlords or the owners of these flats are people who keep the flats specially for letting to undergraduates. If they are going to have undergraduates with full rent protection staying in those flats for their three years, or whatever it is, staying on for a postgraduate course, then for further study, and then possibly taking up a job in the town, these places will be occupied for ever by people who are not undergraduates. Under existing circumstances, do those tenants have protection? Under the Bill do they have protection? Under the Amendment do they have protection?
LORD SHEPHERD: So far as the Amendment is concerned, it does not apply to them. My understanding is that students who are in flats under the normal circumstances of a tenancy will have the same rights, and the landlord will have the same obligations and the same limitations, as anyone else with a tenancy of that sort. But I believe that tenants, students of this type, who are entering into a new agreement might be able to enter on what I think is called a fixed term tenancy. If there were a clear statement at the beginning of the agreement, I think it is possible that the students would have an obligation to leave at the end of the tenancy. This will certainly be applicable to a landlord who may have the premises and who has gone overseas, perhaps on an overseas tour to an embassy or a university, for a period of perhaps a year or two. He would be able to let his premises on a fixed term tenancy, making it quite clear, however, that at the end of that fixed term the person would have to leave. Then the tenant would have to leave. I understand that the general principle, however, is that students who occupied furnished premises would be in the same position as any other tenant.
LORD ROBBINS: Will the noble Lord tell us how far the possibility of fixed term tenancies extend? Listening to what he has just said, it seems to me that all landlords who have been in the habit of letting flats of this sort to students will at once switch over to fixed term tenancies, because that would solve a great deal of their problems.
LORD SHEPHERD: I said that there is a limitation which is open to a certain
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type of landlord, and I specifically referred to those who were proceeding overseas and clearly had it in mind to let their premises for a fixed period. Perhaps I have mislead the Committee into thinking that there is a loop hole here; that one could enter into a fixed tenancy and therefore immediately be excluded from the general provisions. Clearly this Bill, like other legislation, provides for a person who has a tenancy, whether it is fixed term or periodic, the right security of tenure in the premises. I was trying to meet the point of the noble Lord, Lord Hawke. I think the point I was making would be very much limited to those landlords who wished to make premises available while they proceeded overseas.
LORD ROBBINS: So that it would not be open to, let us say, an elderly professor, having inherited from his economist colleagues a solid lack of confidence in gilt-edged securities, to erect a block of flats and let them on fixed term tenancies to married graduate students?
LORD SHEPHERD: If I may say so to the noble Lord, Lord Robbins, I have not yet lost confidence in gilt-edged securities.
BARONESS YOUNG: I am most grateful for the great interest to which the Amendment has given rise, because it meets a very real anomaly in this Bill. I was not really satisfied by the reply of the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, though I am grateful, of course, for the crumb of comfort he has given: that in making regulations the Secretary of State for Education and Science will consider any representations made to him about independent institutions that would not otherwise be covered. On that point, I really do not think that is good enough, because I do not see why these establishments which I have in mind—something like a secretarial college which is, after all, performing an extremely useful service to the community at large—should not simply be covered in the first regulations.
But what is much more important is that the noble Lord has not answered the very real fear that I expressed on Second Reading which now has the support of the noble Lord, Lord Robbins, who, of course, speaks with such authority on these matters, and the noble Lords. Lord Annan and Lord Clitheroe. I am not sure whether the noble Lord, Lord

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Wynne-Jones, has had all his questions answered. The fact is that this Bill as drafted leaves a great gap in the provision of accommodation for students, and it seems to me, although the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, seems to think that it is perfectly all right, that he has in fact exactly made my point in explaining the clause as it stands. He said that the reason for this clause is that although most students in specified educational institutions are there on licence, there may be some who are tenants and there should be no question about a student leaving his premises when he has completed his course; that is to say, the university must be sure that when he has finished his course he will leave the accommodation. That is, of course, completely reasonable and nobody objects to that.
What we are saying is: what about all the other thousands of students not in licensed premises, not in premises where there is a resident landlord, who are private tenants, who will now enjoy full security under Clause 1? On the explanation of the noble Lord. Lord Shepherd, they could be there indefinitely. I accept that a lot will not be there indefinitely, but enough will be there for quite a considerable length of time for landlords not to wish to let their premises in the future. Because they do not wish to let their premises, students will have nowhere to go. For all the arguments that have been put, the universities do not have the money to erect these buildings. We do not know when all these spendid benefactors will turn up to provide the money, and in the intervening period of time there will be an acute shortage of accommodation.
The noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, has not provided any answer at all. I do not know whether he has had discussions with his right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science. But I should have thought that if the Government had consulted at all with vice-chancellors or anybody in the university world, they would have realised that this Bill would cause very great difficulties indeed. I feel that to leave the position as it is with simply an assurance that the noble Lord will say that private students can get their names put on the list of those who will be exempted, is really not good enough. Not only do we need this assur
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ance so far as university students are concerned, but we need it over the whole range of other young people.
May I refer to the case of the nurses? My home is in Oxford, and not only does it have a university and a polytechnic, but it has an enormous medical centre. I think I am right in saying that there are seven major hospitals, including a teaching hospital. There are, therefore, an enormous number of young people coming as medical students and nurses, and all the ancillary medical workers. I can think of two houses which are let furnished exclusively to nurses. I should not like to say exactly at what stage they are in their training, but houses of that sort are going off the market.
Where are these people to find accommodation? Not all nurses wish to live in purpose-built nurses' accommodation—there are all sorts of disadvantages as well as advantages to that—and given that people should have a certain degree of choice as to where they live it seems to me that they will be put into an impossible position under Clause 2(a). That is why my Amendment has extended the provision to include other people seeking professional qualifications. What I am saying also applies equally strongly to those who are working for some kind of technical qualifications. That is why I have included paragraph (ii) of my Amendment. I do not think that the noble Lord has given any answer to these points.
LORD AVEBURY: I am sorry to interrupt the noble Baroness's most eloquent argument. She said categorically that she knew of two houses that were wholly let to nurses which are now being taken off the market. Is the landlord trying to sell them for owner-occupation? If so, I should have thought he had chosen a rather odd time to do it, with the market in such a state. I am surprised at that information. I should have thought that if landlords of furnished properties did that on a large scale they might find they had lost a great deal of money on the sale.
BARONESS YOUNG: I hope I have not misled the Committee in any way. What I thought I said was that I know of two houses let to nurses. My argument is that at an appropriate time the landlord will make a decision. I am sorry if I said

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that the landlord would give up immediately. Clearly, nobody expects the landlords of every bit of furnished accommodation to decide to sell it as a result of this Committee stage. I do not think my argument was quite so absurd. What I am saying, and what we have all agreed, is that as a result of this Bill there will be less furnished accommodation to let. I am saying that those young people who require furnished accommodation for a given period of time, and which the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, has agreed in the case of university accommodation, must really be on a sequence of short tenancies. This should be available to more than just university students in university premises. That is my argument. I have not heard anything that refutes it or meets this point. I hope that the noble Lord will say that he will take my Amendment back and look at it. If it is deficient in drafting I am prepared to accept that, but I cannot accept his argument as it stands.
6.1 p.m.
LORD SHEPHERD: I have a suspicion (I have smelt this atmosphere before), that the noble Baroness is working round to a Division. Looking at the rather over-full Benches opposite at this time of the evening. I suspect that that is very much in her mind. What do I do, as a gentleman? Do I give her the privilege and joy of having a Division, or respond to the invitation she put to me that I should consider this matter again? I ought to put it frankly to the noble Baroness that she is saying that in order that students should have the existing supply of rented accommodation they have not to be protected, because this is what the Amendment will do. Under the Amendment students will not be protected either at rent tribunals, or by the rent officer, or the like. This is more than many of my noble friends would wish to swallow.
If, however, there is some way in which we could meet the heart of the case put by the noble Baroness—I do not know if there is one—I am quite willing, I have always been willing, and nobody would be more willing, to talk with the noble Baroness about this matter. If I can save the noble Baroness from going through the Division Lobby I am very willing to do so. I cannot give any firm commit
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ment, but I shall certainly see what can be done. I recognise that there is a difficulty, but this part of the Bill was not designed to deal with the students who live in private accommodation. I will look at this matter. If the noble Baroness will be satisfied with that, I shall undertake to do it in a most serious manner, not in a trivial or lighthearted fashion in which I am perhaps now approaching the Committee. I shall do it seriously, but I cannot give the noble Baroness any firm undertaking that we shall be able to find a solution. We are dealing here (are we not?) with the problem of providing accommodation for ordinary people other than simply students, and this is a pressure that is on us all the time.
LORD ROBBINS: I was simply going to suggest terms of reference for the noble Lord's meditation. He has agreed, in recommending the clause under discussion, that he thinks it right and proper that university institutions should have the right to turn out the students who have finished their course of studies. He has also pointed out to us again and again in the course of this debate that if the students who do not live in college take apartments in a house where there resides an aged landlady, or perhaps the wicked landlord himself, then they are not protected. So there are people, in the intermediate region, who, like his relative, if I understood him rightly, are proposing to take flats not immediately under the supervision of a landlord who lives in the basement. This is now popular among students. Many of the students are browned off with hostel accommodation. I think that they are wrong, although in some respects it saves a university much trouble if they do not have to act in a paternalistic way.
Certainly this would be more popular among students. It is that group of students, their rights and the rights of their landlords, which really are the subject of discussion in this debate. Whether in fact all that we have said on the noble Baroness's Amendment has been strictly relevant to the particular clause under discussion is an open question, but it has afforded us a splendid opportunity for ventilating the case of this important body of students. We have all agreed (have we not?) that there is likely to be less accommodation for them if this goes through in its present form.
LORD WYNNE-JONES: May I put this point to my noble friend the Lord Privy Seal: what the noble Lord, Lord Robbins, has just said, and what the noble Baroness has said previously, amounts to an important matter dealing with a problem of growing urgency. This is something where the Government could well say, "We should like to look at it carefully, and see what we can do about it." I still do not feel clear about the situation at all, but I know that there is a problem. I have been convinced, in listening to the arguments this afternoon, that the problem is one which ought to be tackled. If the Government are prepared to do it, I am sure that that would win the approval of the Committee.
LORD SOMERS: I think that the noble Lord the Leader of the House said that this Amendment seeks to provide protection not only for students but for ordinary people. If you look at the Amendment, paragraph (iii) says:
"a course of study leading to any of the following …"
They are students. If you are studying to be an optician or veterinary surgeon, you are a student. You may not be a university student, but you are a student.
LORD HYLTON: If the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, is to reconsider this, would he consider legislation somehow in the context of the Bill so that students, and other people doing bona fide courses, can have a fixed-term tenancy, so that they are secure for the normal period of their course or post-graduate studies. He mentioned the case of the owner-occupier who goes abroad for a fixed period of time. That is all right, and we know about that, but it does not cover the professional landlord, or landlady, who is not a university body in his or her right.
LORD SHEPHERD: Everybody likes to be popular, and since the noble Lord, Lord Robbins, suggests that one might be popular if one undertakes to look at this matter, clearly I will. However, there are great difficulties here. It will be necessary not only to discuss this matter within the Departments, but certainly we shall need to discuss it with the local authorities, and also with the various institutions. Clearly, this will take time. I will undertake to look at this matter. However, I think I ought
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to be fair and frank with the Committee; even if they were to pass this Amendment, they would not really be doing anything for the people that we have been discussing, because the Amendment, at heart, deals with institutions. I shall be in immediate consultation with the noble Baroness, and I hope that she will feel so disposed towards me that she will not pursue me on the next stage of the Bill.
BARONESS YOUNG: As the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, knows, I am always a reasonable person. I have listened carefully to him and I will accept his offer to discuss this clause. In doing so, I must be equally frank with him; I cannot accept it as it stands because I do not think that it answers the real points that have been made. I should have said earlier on that I do not believe that it would be impossible to identify who is doing a bona fide course of the kind described in my Amendment, because it is perfectly possible to produce some kind of document from the institution giving the course to that effect. I think that this rather minor technicality could be covered. I hope that, when he discusses it with me, he will tell me in what way he feels my Amendment could be improved to meet these points. I do not regard it as necessarily perfect, but I do not think, and nor do I believe that the Committee as a whole believes, that the clause is correctly drafted. On these terms, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
6.11 p.m.
LORD GIFFORD LORD GIFFORD moved Amendment No. 5:
Page 2, leave out lines 33 and 34 and insert—
"(bbb) the intention of the parties to the tenancy at its inception was that the tenancy should be for the purposes of a holiday;"
The noble Lord said: This is in a sense another lawyers' Amendment. It is a very important one and attaches to a very important point, but I hope that it is not a controversial one. It deals with the definition given in the Bill of "holiday lettings". We have reached Clause 2(1)(bbb) and the noble Baroness will later be going into the fourth degree of "b's", which only goes to show how

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difficult the Bill is. I recognise at once that the landlords and landladies of genuine holiday accommodation should be outside the control of the Rent Act. Equally clearly, I would hope that my noble friend will accept that landlords in the inner cities should not be able to evade the Rent Act by describing as holiday accommodation what is a perfectly ordinary letting to a family which does not need a holiday at all. I have experience of an agent in Notting Hill who quite regularly puts on the rent books which he gives to prospective tenants the words "Holiday Letting", knowing quite well that the tenant does not want a holiday in bracing Notting Hill but is in fact in need of a home. I have been able to show my noble friend a copy of one of these bogus holiday agreements. The tenant is made to sign a form headed "Holiday flats—temporary accommodation available for a maximum of 26 weeks". The wording continues, "I agree to take the flat as holiday accommodation for a period of four weeks", and that is then renewed month by month at an exhorbitant rental.
If, as a result of a wrong definition of "holiday accommodation" in the Bill, landlords were able to evade the intention of the Bill by describing something as a holiday letting when it is not so, a major gap would have been blown in the Bill. I am very doubtful whether the definition of a holiday letting proposed in the Bill serves to protect the tenant of what I have described as bogus holiday accommodation, for what the Bill requires a court to look to is the right conferred upon the tenant. The purpose of the tenancy is to confer upon the tenant the right to occupy the dwelling house for a holiday. My fear is—and I have discussed this with colleagues at the Bar—that when a test case comes before it the court will say, as it certainly will, that, though the tenant may well not have wanted to have a holiday, that was the only right which the landlord conferred upon him. The courts will look to the form of agreement and, seeing that, as in the case I have mentioned, it states that the accommodation is only holiday accommodation, will say that they cannot say that the purpose of the tenancy was to confer on the tenant the right to occupy the premises permanently, because that
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was manifestly not what was stated in the agreement itself.
I think that the intention of the parties as to the purpose of the tenancy should be the decisive factor. If it is quite apparent that both landlord and tenant knew that no question of a holiday was required by the tenant, the courts should be able to investigate and to get behind the form of the letting, and to say that the intention of the parties had nothing at all to do with holiday accommodation.
It is essential to get this right because the kind of gap which a wrong decision on this matter would expose is considerable. It is, in a sense, one for the lawyers, for I recognise that there would be arguments in a court for saying that the Government's present proposal requires the courts to look at the true purpose of the tenancy; but there is this disturbing reference to the right conferred, and I believe that it is by no means clear to the courts that the intention of Parliament will be to prevent these kinds of bogus holiday lettings obtaining exemption. I would therefore urge my formula as making it quite plain that it is the intention of the parties rather than the form of the agreement which is to be looked at.
6.17 p.m.
LORD SHEPHERD: My noble friend is quite right in saying that this is a lawyers' Amendment. I am therefore advised that it would not materially improve the effect of the existing exemptions of holiday lettings. The intention of the Amendment is quite clear; that is, it is designed to prevent landlords from evading the provisions of the Act by claiming that residential lettings are for the purpose of holidays. But this is already achieved in the present exemption by the use of the words, "the purpose of the tenancy". This does not mean the purpose or intention of the landlord or tenant individually, but the facts behind the tenancy agreement entered into by both parties. The fact that a landlord calls a letting a "holiday letting" or persuades his tenant to agree that it is one will not prevent a court, which is the arbiter in such cases, from determining on the basis of the surrounding facts that a residential tenancy exists. The purpose of a letting is a question of fact to be decided by the court on evidence. It is not a question

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which can be determined simply by the label given to the tenancy by the landlord or the tenant.
I gather that my noble friend referred to the rent book as being evidence; but I understand that a rent book is not given or required to be given for a holiday letting, so I do not think that this could be used in evidence. I hope that my noble friend will consider what I have said. As lie has said, it is a lawyers' point. My advice is that the position is clear within the present legislation, that it is for the courts themselves to decide the general character of the tenancy and that this does not depend upon what may allegedly have been said either by the landlord or the tenant as to the intention of the tenancy.
LORD HALE: I am sorry to return like a dog to my earlier vomit, but this is precisely the same point once again. What is the test? If there is a rent book, an agreement or a scrap of paper showing that the letting is for a holiday, is that decisive evidence? Does the court decide on that? My noble friend nods his head. I attribute great importance to his nods, though less since he made his unexpected pronouncement about investments. I am quite willing to sell him all mine at the price which I gave for them ten years ago if he would like to have some experience as an investor in Government securities.
What is a holiday? If I may quote an exotic extra-territorial example, is Mr. Ronald Biggs on holiday? He is certainly on vacation; no one can deny that. Indeed, if I may venture to use a quotation from a learned friend of mine, taken from the Latin, the position is not without a certain degree of what he called Fragrant delectation. Biggs has been having a good time. Many people who go on holiday with these wretched travel agencies have a very tough time indeed now.
In the Second Reading debate, a noble Lord made a point which I thought was valid. To put it without arrogance, I think he made one point and might have made two. There is no test of a holiday by the season of the year. Discriminating people go to Cornwall in the winter and not in the high summer.
LORD SOMERS: May I interrupt the noble Lord, Lord Hale, for a second? He realises, of course, that there are such things as "busmen's holidays"? How does he describe those?
LORD HALE: I do not know. I should have to leave that to Miss Dorothy Sayers who dealt with the subject in about 400 pages, and did so ably and very well. If I wanted to extend the discussion, I could talk about people who enjoy the lights of Northern Scotland. I have not seen them for many years. I used to love the country North of the Caledonian Canal, with a little trading in oil, or employment, and so on but not too much, possibly a little stag shooting. But I do not want to let a perfectly serious argument be touched by my frivolity. The noble Lord, Lord Gifford, has put the case very fairly and well.
I was saying that another noble Lord had mentioned the fact that with a genuine letting holiday there is not very much to fear. People from Oldham who go to Torquay do not decide to shack up there, stay a few months and then face the courts. They go back home at the end of the month or fortnight or at the end of the Oldham Wake's Week, or whatever they have. There is a danger and a serious hardship for landlords who let, for temporary residential purposes throughout the winter, cottages which they normally like to occupy themselves while on vacation for part of the summer and let for a fair rent during the rest of the summer. There is a problem there. I can remember being the tenant of a small bungalow in West Road Bridport, a charming and lovely situation, which I got for a very modest sum. It was furnished and I was the tenant, with power to sub-let for holidays. A friend of mine who went down as my guest in September met a charming gentleman in the local pub and let the bungalow for the winter. He said he was sure that I would be glad to have the extra money for the winter, but I was not at all glad, because I know what sometimes happens to furniture when you let to strangers.
Some months later I was playing golf—as I observe that there are no right reverend Prelates here, I might add that it was on a Sunday morning—when a police inspector walked across the course looking hard at me. Being of a frivolous

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turn of mind, I said that he had come to inquire about the Brighton trunk murder. That invasion of my privacy was ended when the police officer said: "I must talk to you, Mr. Hale. I want to talk to you about the Brighton trunk murder. Did you know about that woman to whom you let the bungalow, and did you make any inquiries about her character? Did you know that she has disappeared and we are checking up on all the women who have disappeared from the South Coast?" Perhaps that is not an example which I could quote as one of general application, but it shows some of the problems that may arise.
All the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, has said is, "Shove in a few extra words and make it clear." He has not said, "Detract from your intention." The noble Lord the Lord Privy Seal says that we are in complete agreement as to our objectives. "We want to do that. We think it is unnecessary." I would not like to say how many times I have heard a Minister say that something was unnecessary, and how many times I have seen a Minister go to the Box and say, "On the highest possible advice I am now able to say that this clause is as clear as mud." A few months later the matter goes before the courts, possibly even before the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, as Master of the Rolls, who has a great gift for explaining what he thinks of the drafting of both English and foreign law. Many of us always appreciate his comments. But what reason is there why we should not add a few words that help to clarify? Why should we leave it to the judges to say to what extent they are able to define a "holiday", to ask why Parliament did not define a "holiday", and to ask "If Parliament had meant to say this, why did they not say it?"
I apologise for a longer interruption than I had intended, but the noble Lord will have observed that at the moment the courts are moving a little more on the road to deciding that they arc entitled to try to assess what was Parliament's intention. They have always said that they are bound only to assume that Parliament must have had some intention, however indefinable, however incredible, and however inexplicable front the point of view of discernability. They
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have always said, "We cannot look at what was said and we cannot look at what questions were asked, because that would be infringing the privileges of Parliament and would affect a principle of great constitutional importance." Now they are trying to find out whether we mean anything, and if we mean anything why not help them and accept the noble Lord's Amendment, which the Lord Privy Seal has said will make no difference to his intentions?
LORD GIFFORD: If indeed the courts were able to look at the Hansard for this debate, and were able to see in plain terms what my noble friend has said on behalf of the Government, and were then to see that this House plainly intended that the courts were meant to go behind the facts, I would be much more confident in accepting my noble friend's reply and assurance about the advice he received on the likely interpretation of the clause. As it is, of course, the courts cannot look at Hansard by a rule which must soon, I think, be challenged and made redundant. They are not allowed to read the report of this debate. Even so, I hope that my noble friend is right. I appreciate that the matter has been looked at carefully. If my noble friend is wrong, he will find a Private Members' Bill on his hands very quickly, because this matter will certainly come to be tested in the appellate courts in the near future. I am sure we shall see many so-called "holiday lettings" coming up for investigation. But I hope that he is right, and in that hope I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
6.28 p.m.
BARONESS YOUNG BARONESS YOUNG moved Amendment No. 6:
Page 2, line 35, at end insert—
("(bbbb) the tenancy is for a fixed term certain; or").
The noble Baroness said: In moving this Amendment I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, for the discussion we had on this point and for the long letter which he sent in explanation of it. I do not want to take up the time of the Committee about something on which I know we are all agreed and which, as I understand the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, is a point which is met

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in the Bill. But it is important to get this matter on the Record, because the question of letting your house for a given period of time, when you may be away, either serving overseas in the Foreign Office or on sabbatical' leave, or whatever it is, on a fixed-term tenancy and being absolutely sure that you can get it back at the end of the tenancy, is a matter of importance. I raised it originally because, although I am not a lawyer myself, it was put to me by a lawyer that this point was not covered in the Bill. I understand that it is covered by Schedule 3. I have looked at this matter again, and of course I have looked at it in the light of the explanatory letter that the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, has sent me.
There is one point that I should like to raise, and I think it is of some importance. If I have understood the position correctly, when an owner-occupier lets his house in this way he must give notice under Section 79; and he may not realise, in the course of the passage of the Bill, that he ought to have given notice in this way. Indeed, I think the last paragraph of the noble Lord's letter indicates that there could be room for someone not being able to repossess his home because he has not served this notice. If I may, I will quote from the letter because I think it will be helpful to everybody to know what the point is:
"I can understand your fears that some people may not be aware of the need in future to serve a notice in order to retain the right to repossess their home, but I think this problem can be overcome. We have already had several inquiries, not only from individuals but also from building societies, Government Departments and an organisation representing many of the large firms which post staff overseas, about these provisions, and in general they seem perfectly satisfied with them".
I am of course very glad to hear that, but I am concerned about the individual who does not really fall into any one of those categories; and I should like the noble Lord to say how he intends to inform those people who wish to let their house about this provision. There are people who, perhaps unwisely, will not have taken legal advice before doing so and who could really find themselves in considerable difficulty when they return, if, by some misfortune, the tenant decides that he wishes to stay on. I am sure that
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the larger organisations will look after their employees, but there could be individuals who might not know about this, and it is for this reason that I should like to have it on the Record. I beg to move.
LORD SHEPHERD: I think that the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, who I see opposite, also raised with me some of the points that the noble Baroness has just mentioned in moving this Amendment. I undertook to seek to reply to the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, on the Question. Whether the clause shall stand part?, and if he is agreeable I shall seek to cover the ground of the noble Baroness, and also, perhaps too, go a little further and deal with a similar point that the noble Lord had in mind.
The Bill already has safeguards for the position of the landlord in two situations—situations in which, I think, everybody would agree that some safeguard is necessary; first, where the owner-occupier lets his own home during a temporary absence and, secondly, where the landlord is resident on the same premises with the tenant. In the first case, the Rent Acts have in the past recognised the right of the temporarily absent owner-occupier to recover possession of his home when he wishes to live there himself.
The Rent Act 1968 provides in Case 10 of Schedule 3 an absolute ground for possession of unfurnished accommodation where the owner-occupier has given written notice at or before the time of the tenancy being granted that possession may be recovered under this Case. Similarly, if the owner-occupier lets his home furnished on a periodic contract and gives written notice under Section 79 of the 1968 Act that he is an owner-occupier within the meaning of that section, and if he then wishes to return to live in his home, the rent tribunal have no power to suspend the operation of the notice to quit which he serves on his tenant. Absentee owner-occupiers who let their homes furnished on fixed-term contracts have of course the right to possession at the end of that term, subject to the requirement to obtain an order for possession from the court before evicting a tenant who has refused to leave at the end of his contract.
The Rent Bill preserves this concession in favour of owner-occupiers who let their homes in their own absence. If the letting is made after commencement date of the

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Bill (one month after Royal Assent), then the owner-occupier who lets furnished will be able to guarantee that he can regain possession by serving a Case 10 notice. The Bill also makes provisions preserving the rights of absent owner-occupiers who have let furnished before the Bill comes into force, either under the Section 79 procedure or on a fixed-term contract.
There will be nothing in future to prevent an owner-occupier from using letting on fixed-term contract so long as he also satisfies the notice procedure. Indeed, this method would best suit those people who know for certain how long it will be before they require their homes again, in particular those such as members of the Armed Forces or the Diplomatic Service who are posted away for a fixed tour of duty. Their position will then in practice be the same as it is now. The tenant will be aware that the owner-occupier has an absolute right to repossession, as he has now, and that he therefore has no right to continued occupation of the dwelling-house when the contract ends. There should therefore be no question of a tenant of an absent owner-occupier remaining in occupation in an attempt to claim statutory protection. Where the tenant does not move out in time, the owner will of course have to go to the court for a possession order, but this is true in the existing situation, and it will, as of now, be open to the owner-occupier to apply to the court for an expedited hearing if he requires his home urgently.
The noble Baroness asked how this position can he made known to those who wish to let property. I hope that a landlord letting property on this basis would consult either with a lawyer or with any of the bodies that provide information to the general public. But I think that the Bill as drafted is just about right in this respect. The noble Lord, Lord Bethell, intended to ask me what the position was about visiting diplomats, Ambassadors or High Commissioners, who may occupy furnished accommodation in London. My understanding is that if they occupy the premises and the tenancy is in the name of the Embassy or of the country, then they have no rights at all. Nor, of course, do the country or the Embassy have rights, because they are a body; they are not an individual who will have a place
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of occupation. The position is the same in the case of companies: companies cannot be occupiers of residential accommodation. I do not think that the noble Lord need be concerned about these people or about the landlord who may be letting accommodation to that class of person.
LORD BETHELL: I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, for what he has said, which certainly goes some way towards answering the doubt which is in many people's minds on this matter of tenants who come from abroad as representatives of foreign countries, and from foreign companies. I must immediately declare an interest in that I am the owner of a number of furnished flats which I let. In the case of none of these flats, I may say, do I think that I am providing a home for anyone. In Central London there are very large numbers of flats (a high proportion in Central London) which are not homes but which are provided for people such as those I have just mentioned, and for transients of various other categories. It would be a very serious problem if this Bill were in any way to restrict the supply of these flats which are made available to transients whether they come from abroad or, for that matter, from this country.
The noble Lord has said that provided agreements are drawn up in the name of a company or in the name of an embassy, the occupier will not have the protection under the proposed Bill. But I wonder whether he can say what would be the situation if, as is sometimes the case, the existing agreement happens to be in the name of the individual concerned? Suppose a counsellor at a certain embassy has taken a furnished flat in his own name. As I understand it, he will have security of tenure under the Bill. He will probably be paying an extremely high rent for his flat because such representatives demand large flats where they have to do entertaining; they have furniture of an extremely high standard—not the few sticks of furniture which the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, has referred to several times, but furniture costing several thousands of pounds. He is paying a high rent, very often in excess of £100 a week. Will he, if he has signed an agreement in his name, be able to go to the rent officer in order to have his

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rent reduced? If, for one reason or another—and anything can happen in any country, as we know from recent experience—he decides to remain in London and not to return to his country, will he have security of tenure at a reduced rent? Will he be able to turn his company- or embassy-acquired flat into his home under this Bill? If that is the case, does not the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, feel that some amendment is called for in the Bill which will prevent such a state of affairs from happening?
LORD AVEBURY: I am sorry to have come in during the middle of the noble Lord's speech, but would not such accommodation as he has mentioned be outside the rateable value limits for protection?
LORD BETHELL: It would not. I remember speaking on the debate a year or so ago when rateable value limits for unfurnished accommodation were raised to their present levels. I think I am right in saying that the Government spokesman at that time said that there were only 7,000 residential units in the whole country which would not be protected under the proposed legislation. I can give the noble Lord a concrete example from my own experience, and that is that there are flats being let now at rents of over £100 a week—and this is by no means extortionate or exorbitant according to the market value—which have a rateable value under the new scale of less than £1,000 There are very few in central London that have a rateable value of more than £1,500.
LORD SHEPHERD: I can give only a short answer to the noble Lord. If it is within the rateable value as defined in the Bill, and if the tenancy is in the name of the individual—not the company or the country—then the answer is "yes" he does come within the ambit of the Bill with all the rights and privileges that go with it. It may sound slightly iniquitous, particularly to the embassy or the company concerned, but that may be a consequence of their own failing for having allowed an employee to enter into a tenancy on their behalf and putting it in that individual's name. But the noble Lord asked me a question and the answer is the one that I have given, yes he will.
LORD BETHELL: I asked the noble Lord another question, which was: did
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he not think that it was wrong that such an employee should be able to take advantage of the proposed Bill and remain in his accommodation at a reduced rent which he might have negotiated with the rent officer when in fact he took the flat for an entirely different purpose?
LORD SHEPHERD: Fair or not, I do not see how we can get over the difficulty. I do not see how one can draft legislation to deal with these odd, and I should think very rare, cases. If there is any mistake, I suppose it must lie with the company or the country concerned which may have lost valuable property which they will probably need to replace for some new employee coming in. And clearly, too, for the landlords, in taking a very high rent probably knowing that it is a rent well beyond an individual and a rent that could be paid only by a Government or by a company, they took the risk. I must admit it may be that they did not know that a Bill of this nature was likely, but I am sorry I cannot be more helpful to the noble Lord. I do not see a way round this particular difficulty.
LORD BETHELL: May I very briefly suggest a way in which the noble Lord might find a way round this difficulty: that is, by accepting my Amendments Nos. 10A, B, C and D.
LORD MELCHETT: I am not entirely clear why we should try to see a way round this. If a landlord has a tenant who is paying a rent, albeit perhaps a lower rent than the landlord would like—but that applies to most tenants—if the rent officer has been asked to fix a rent he will fix a fair rent. He will not fix too low a rent or one that is unfair to the landlord. I do not see any reason why the noble Lord's fiats, just because they happen to be let to people who he does not expect to stay there, should be unprotected rather than any other tenancies.
BARONESS YOUNG: If I may say so, as I think that originally we were speaking to my Amendment. I understand the fears of my noble friend Lord Bethell. Of course this is another group of people, and no doubt a group of people with whom I am not as familiar as he is, who visit London for diplomatic or business purposes and who need, while they are

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here, somewhere to stay. I talked about people who are, as it were, transients at the other end of the scale, students who come and go. But there are large groups of people, and I think my noble friend Lord Bethell has raised a real point. I do not know whether the Government have discussed this matter with the Foreign Office and what effect they think this could have. But I can well see that this could create great difficulties.
That leads me to my second point. I am grateful for the explanation given by the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, about fixed-term tenancies. I am referring now to where an owner-occupier lets his own house for a period of time. It is helpful to have this on the Record. But as both these cases have illustrated, this is a difficult Bill to understand. It will apply to a great many individuals and I wonder whether the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, will give an assurance that a simplified version setting out these main points will be available immediately the Bill becomes law, and available very widely because there will be an enormous number of people affected by it. We are working, as I said originally, to a very tight timetable and it is difficult enough for anybody who has spent, as I have no doubt all of us taking part in this debate have spent, days trying to understand it, let alone someone who is suddenly confronted with this situation and has only the Act to work on.
LORD SHEPHERD: I will certainly respond to the noble Baroness and will see what I can say at a later stage of the Bill in regard to information and publicity. I agree with her that a simplified explanation of the new provisions would not only be justified for the landlords concerned, but also for the tenants. I shall certainly look at this point.
BARONESS YOUNG: I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 2 agreed to.
Clause 3 [Recovery of possession of holiday accommodation let on out-of-season tenancies]:
6.48 p.m.
BARONESS YOUNG BARONESS YOUNG moved Amendment No. 7:
Page 3, leave out from beginning of line 15 to ("the") in line 17 and insert—
"( ) In Part 11 of Schedule 3 to the Rent Act 1968 (Cases in which court must order possession of dwelling-house subject to regulated tenancy)—

(a) in the first line of Case 10 after the word 'occupied' there shall be inserted the words 'or intended to occupy' and after the word 'his' there shall be inserted the word 'principal', and

(b)".

The noble Baroness said: On behalf of my noble friend Lord Kinnoull I should like to move this Amendment. I must apologise to the Committee as he has only just asked me to do so. He says that it raises a technical point to which he would like an answer. I have not had an opportunity to look at it myself, having seen the Amendment only today, but if the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, has the answer I hope that he will be able to give it.
LORD SHEPHERD: I am only seeking clarification, Which Amendment is it? Like the noble Baroness I have just received a piece of paper. Is it "Page 3, leave out from beginning of line 15"?
BARONESS YOUNG: Yes.
LORD SHEPHERD: The effect of this Amendment would be to amend Case 10 of Schedule 3 to the Rent Act 1968 so as to allow a person who has not occupied a dwelling-house as his residence but who intends to do so, to claim an absolute right to repossession if he has let that dwelling-house on a protected tenancy and he wishes to Occupy it himself. At present of course, the absolute right to possession under Case 10 only applies if the landlord had previously lived in the dwelling-house himself.
I have some sympathy with the situation which I assume the noble Lord and the noble Baroness are concerned about: that is the position of the person who buys a house for his use, but before he occupies it, lets it for a time. Such a person might himself be living in tied accommodation—if, for example, he is a schoolmaster or a minister of religion—or he might have bought the house in advance of his retirement from a job in another part of the country. But I do not think we can make any concession in favour of such genuine cases without running the grave risk of presenting

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opportunities for abuse by the unscrupulous. It would be all too easy for a landlord to claim that he intends to occupy a house as his residence at some undefined time in the future, when what lie is really doing is trying to avoid the Act. I do not think that the addition of the word "principal" before the word "residence" would add much force to the case in these circumstances.
There is of course a ground for possession already in the Rent Act in Case 8 on which a landlord can apply to the court if he reasonably requires the dwelling-house occupied by the tenant for his own occupation or that of a member of his family. It is not an absolute ground for possession; that means that the court must be satisfied that it is reasonable to make the order and that, having regard to the circumstances, no more hardship would be caused to the tenant by granting the order than to the landlord by refusing it.
These provisions seem to me to offer would-be owner-occupiers the opportunity to gain possession of previously let accommodation for their own use without exposing tenants to the insecurity which would result from the introduction of an Amendment on the lines suggested. I hope the noble Baroness will feel, having had that explanation, that she might now leave it to her noble friend Lord Kinnoull to read what I have said and to decide whether it is satisfactory.
LORD AVEBURY: I do not know whether the noble Lord has any information regarding cases of the kind he mentioned, where a schoolmaster or a minister of religion, for example, has acquired a property with a view to his retirement in two or three years' time and has let it to a tenant, having given clear notice to that tenant that he will require the property when he reaches the age of 65. Has there been any case where landlords of this kind have had difficulty in obtaining possession in the courts? If the noble Lord could reassure us on that, I am sure it would help to reassure everybody.
LORD SHEPHERD: I do not think there has been any difficulty under the previous legislation, but of course we are now moving into the more difficult area of furnished accommodation. I will look to see whether serious cases of this kind
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are on record. I am not aware of them myself, but I will certainly see whether I can give the noble Baroness and the noble Lord any information on this matter. I think I can give an assurance to the noble Lord that there have been no notable difficulties in this matter.
BARONESS YOUNG: I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, for that reply. This is a quite specific point which concerns a number of people. Here, of course, we are all concerned only with bona fide cases of people who decide to buy a house for their retirement a few years early and would expect to occupy it when they retire. I think it would be very helpful to us all to read what the noble Lord has said; and if he could write to me when he writes to the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, on this point I am sure this would clarify the situation. Then, if any points arise we can raise them on Report. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
6.57 p.m.
LORD GIFFORD LORD GIFFORD moved Amendment No. 8:
Page 3, line 27, at beginning insert ("bona fide"3.
The noble Lord said: I beg leave to move Amendment No. 8 and to speak at the same time to Amendment No. 9. which has the same effect. This deals with the clause with the rubric:
"Recovery of possession of holiday accommodation let on out-of-season tenancies".
From that rubric I see at once what is envisaged; namely, that landlords of holiday accommodation should be able, without fear of granting a protected tenancy, to grant tenancies in the off season. The trouble is that the terms of the clause do not talk about "out-of-season" tenancies at all but, I suggest, go dangerously wide. If a landlord gives a notice under the proposed Case 10A before granting an 8-month tenancy, all he has to prove if he wishes to get automatic possession at the end of it is that at some time in the previous 12 months before he granted the tenancy somebody occupied the dwelling-house under a right to occupy it for a holiday, no matter for how short a time it may have been. A friend of the landlord may testify, quite truthfully, that he occupied this dwelling-house for a weekend, having come to London from

1219
the North. The real purpose of that weekend holiday may have been to enable the landlord to raise the circumstances which he could later utilise under Case 10A.
There is no reference here to the purpose of the tenancy, as there was (a fact which was relied upon by my noble friend) in Clause 2. Provided it can be shown that somebody occupied it for some time under a holiday letting in order to have a holiday, the tenant who would not know about these matters loses his protection. Indeed, if an unscrupulous landlord—and the noble Lord referred to these a moment ago—were to bring forward a friend to bear false witness that he had spent a holiday for a week or a fortnight in the dwelling-house, the tenant would not be able to dispute it or disprove it in any way since he would have no means of verifying the situation. I have sought to introduce an element of good faith ("bona fide") into this case. It may not be the best way to do what I suggest is needed, to distinguish between the kind of accommodation referred to in the rubric to the clause and the unscrupulous letting of "normal" accommodation—that is to say, not seaside or holiday accommodation—by a landlord who wants at a later stage to be able to turn out a tenant who asks for a decrease in rent or perhaps complains about the state of repair of the property. I beg to move.
LORD SHEPHERD: I have looked at this Amendment with care. I would assure my noble friend that it will be necessary for the dwelling-house to have been occupied within the previous year under a right to occupy for a holiday. This method of preventing abuse of the position was chosen in preference to a method which required the landlord to produce proof that he had entered into future books for holiday use of the accommodation, as it would be difficult to devise an adequate test on which the court could make a judgment which would not be a disincentive to landlords to continue the practice of out-of-season letting.
My advice is that the insertion of the words "bona fide" would in the context add nothing to paragraph (b) of Case
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10A. The paragraph refers to the dwelling-house having been
"occupied under a right to occupy it for a holiday".
This can only mean a genuine right, and if in any case there is any dispute, it would be for the courts to decide whether such a right was granted, or the transaction was merely tolerable. The words "bona fide" do not appear in Section 75(5) of the Rent Act 1968, which provides that no right to occupy a dwelling for a holiday shall be treated for the purpose of Part VI of that Act as a right to occupy it as a resident. The abolition of these words were not considered necessary. They are no more necessary in Case 10A, and indeed to insert them here, when they do not appear in Section 70(5), would only be likely to give rise to questions in the court, as the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, as a barrister, will appreciate. I have looked into the matter and I do not believe the inclusion of the words would materially affect the Bill as drafted.
LORD GIFFORD: I accept what my noble friend has said, but there is a difference between Case 10A and Clause 2, and, indeed, Section 70(5) of the Rent Act 1968, to which my noble friend referred. In Clause 2 and Section 70(5) we are dealing with the purpose of the tenancy granted to a tenant—that is to say, was the tenant intending to have a holiday? He can give evidence as to what his real intentions were. In Case 10A one is dealing with a right conferred upon somebody else some 12 months or so before the tenancy begins. Even if the main purpose of allowing the person who occupied it 12 months before was to avoid the Rent Acts, if that person had a week's holiday in the dwelling-house it does not matter whether or not the real intention was to set up the case and thereby avoid the Rent Acts. I am rather distressed that there is not any element of either good faith or even reference to purpose. I do not want to spend any more time on this, but I hope my noble friend will look at it again before the Bill finally leaves your Lordships' House. It seems to me that this is a different case from the cases envisaged in Clause 2 which we have discussed.
LORD SHEPHERD: I am happy to respond to my noble friend. I will look

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at this again, and if an Amendment is necessary I will see what steps can be taken to introduce it at a later stage.
LORD GIFFORD: I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
On Question, Whether Clause 3 shall stand part of the Bill?
LORD SHEPHERD: If noble Lords wish to raise matters on Clause 3, I suggest we leave them until after dinner, if that would he convenient to Members of the Committee.
LORD STRABOLGI: I beg to move that the House do now resume.
On Question, Motion agreed to and House resumed accordingly.

FARRIERS (REGISTRATION) BILL [H.L.]
7.5 p.m.
LORD NEWALL: My Lords, noble Lords who have listened to me recently will realise that I do not believe in speaking at any great length, and I do not intend to make any great change this evening. However, I thought I should say a few words because my Amendment was put down and I was moved to reply to certain regional criticisms.
LORD STRABOLGI: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt, but I think the noble Lord's first step is that he should move, "That the Report be now received".
LORD NEWALL: I beg your Lordships' pardon. I beg to move that the Report be now received.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Report received.
LORD NEWALL LORD NEWALL moved Amendment No. 1.
After clause 17 insert the following new clause:
("Exclusion of specified areas.

(1) The Secretary of State may by order made from time to time with respect to any specified part of Great Britain provide that for such period as may be prescribed by the order Section 16 of this Act shall not apply to the part of Great Britain to which the order relates.

(2) Any order made under this section shall be made by statutory instrument which shall be subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.

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(3) Before making any order under this section with respect to any specified part of Great Britain the Secretary of State shall consult such bodies as appear to him to be representative of the interests of farriers, of owners of horses and of animal welfare within that part of Great Britain and any other organisation which in the circumstances he considers it proper to consult.

(4) Notice of the making of any order under this section shall be published by the Secretary of State, if the order relates in whole or in part to England or Wales, in the London Gazette and, if the order relates in whole or in part to Scotland, in the Edinburgh Gazette."

The noble Lord said: My Lords, I put down this Amendment because I have been moved to reply to certain regional criticisms which have been levelled against the Bill, possibly in good faith, although naturally some opinions are better informed than others. It has been represented that there may be some geographical problems. In view of that, I have put down this Amendment in order to enable the Secretary of State to make an order to exclude any part of the Nation after appropriate and due consultation. Possibly I discovered the solution because I was reminded of young Lochinvar who probably had the best-shod steed North of the Border! But, after talking to various people who raised objections, I now have the support of every part of the country geographically speaking. Therefore, I do not think that there is anything more to be said. Anybody who is interested has probably read the Amendment, and I hope that they are generally in agreement.
LORD ALLERTON: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friends the noble Lords, Lord Margadale and Lord Burton, and the noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, I wish to express our gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Newall, for the inclusion of this new clause in the Bill. It is unfortunate that my noble friends are unable to be here this evening owing to inescapable engagements elsewhere. During the Committee stage of the Bill the noble Lord, Lord Newall, undertook to look again at some of the points to which we objected. This he has done, the new clause has been drafted and we have found the result to be acceptable. We wish him well regarding the further passage of the Bill.
LORD WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Newall, will not think I am being unhelpful, but

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to some extent this Amendment makes a nonsense of the Bill as a whole. Clause 16 has the effect of making it an offence for an unregistered person after the appointed day either to carry out any farriery or to claim to be a farrier. This is the real purpose of the Bill. The proviso to subsection (1) makes certain exceptions to the absolute prohibition on an unregistered person carrying out farriery. The new clause which has just been moved, (subsection (1)) would enable the Secretary of State by order to disapply the effect of Clause 16 in a specified part of Great Britain for such period as may be prescribed. Subsection (2) provides that such an order shall be made by statutory instrument subject to the negative resolution procedure. Subsection (3) specifies that the Secretary of State shall before making such an order consult such bodies as he thinks represent the interests of local farriers, horse owners or animal welfare, and any other organisation appropriate to the particular circumstances. Subsection (4) requires the Secretary of State to publish notice of such an Order in the relevant Gazette.
The noble Lord, and your Lordships, will know that there was certain criticism of the Bill on Second Reading. It did not adequately deal with the remote areas of the country, such as the Highlands and Islands, where qualified farriers are few and far between. In Committee, two Amendments were proposed to remedy this difficulty: one by Lord Margadale, Viscount Thurso, Viscount Massereene and Ferrard and Lord Strathclyde, to remove the absolute prohibition on unregistered persons from carrying out farriery. This, as the noble Lord knows, was withdrawn. The other Amendment, by Viscount Thurso, Lord Allerton, Lord Burton and Lord Strathclyde, to remove Scotland from the Bill, as your Lordships will recall, was defeated. The Worshipful Company's solution to the difficulty is to offer the Secretary of State power to disapply the Act in particular regions. In Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Newall, moved a new clause similar in intention to, but different in points of detail from, this one. He withdrew it when Viscount Thurso and Lord Burton criticised it on points of detail. He had undertaken to discuss with Lord Margadale and Viscount Thurso the difficulties of the
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remoter areas, and in withdrawing the Amendment he reiterated the undertaking, as he reminded us this evening.
The new clause which he is now moving makes alterations of detail which were suggested or implied by the critics of the earlier version in Committee. Specifically, it sets no arbitrary time limit on the Order and restricts the Secretary of State's freedom of consultation only in general terms. I do not see how this Amendment is more acceptable than the earlier version. It could be said that the new clause provided a solution to the difficulties that could arise in the remoter areas, or in areas where farriers were temporarily lacking. It has the merit of enabling the provisions of the Bill, at least in theory, to be applied flexibly and to respond to a local situation. But we must face the fact that it has some serious defects.
In the first place, to set up a compulsory registration scheme for anyone who wishes to carry out farriery, and then to make provision for the scheme to be ineffective for apparently unlimited periods over possibly large areas of the country, suggests a certain lack of confidence in the sponsors about the likely effect of the Bill. Furthermore, to make it possible, for substantial periods, for persons to carry out farriery in a particular part of the country without being registered somewhat weakens the assertion, which is central to the sponsor's case for the Bill, that a compulsory registration scheme is essential if more farriers are to be recruited—this would appear to be the central point and purpose of the Bill. If that is so, how will farriers be recruited in the areas—Scotland, for example, which is the case in point at the present moment—where an Order under the new clause is in effect?
On a practical level, one must face the fact that the machinery for disapplying the Bill in a particular area is likely to be very slow to take effect. The processes of observing a shortage, detecting its effect, drawing it to the attention of the Secretary of State, the resulting consultation and the making of the Statutory Instrument are likely to be protracted. It could take a long time accurately to assess a situation in a particular area. Certainly, the procedure could not deal with a temporary shortage of farriers

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caused, for example, by ill health. Moreover, it seems likely that the issues that will have to be determined by the Secretary of State before making an Order will be of considerable difficulty. The new clause allows an Order to apply in any part of Great Britain. There would be no difficulty in defining a part of Great Britain by reference to existing territorial areas, such as Scotland or Cornwall or some other defined area, or even a magistrates' court area, but an area served by a farrier or by a number of farriers is not likely to be coterminous with any existing boundaries such as those of Scotland or boundaries of a local authority or, for that matter, the limits of a petty sessional division.
How, then, is the part of Great Britain to which an Order is to apply to be defined? Further, how will the Secretary of State determine how long the Order is to be in operation? If there is a shortage of farriers in a large area, how will those whom he is to consult know when the shortage is likely to cease? The difficulty, I appreciate, would be mitigated, but not removed, if there were power to vary or revoke an Order. But presumably it is not contemplated that the Secretary of State should make an Order for an unlimited period. He would certainly be placed in an extremely awkward position if he were required to render inoperative for a substantial period of time an Act of Parliament which the noble Lord is asking Parliament to enact for the whole country. This is the whole purpose of the Bill: to lay down certain defined regulations, requirements, to be applied to the country as a whole, and not piecemeal, whatever the circumstances and whatever the reasons.
Lastly, having a differential application of the law within different parts of England or Wales or Scotland must of necessity produce problems of enforcement. On balance, I am bound to say that the disadvantages of this new clause seem substantially to outweigh its merits. The question of the practical effect of the application of the Bill across the country as a whole is undoubtedly one to which the sponsors, if I may say so with respect, could give more consideration. I am fully aware of the desire of the noble Lord to get this matter through the House in order to get it to
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another place; one understands that. But there is considerable merit in getting the Bill right in this House, so that it may receive an easier or speedy passage in another place. Having considered this matter, and, I hope, having given your Lordships a fair impression of how the Government see this issue, I contend that this is an Amendment which quite seriously undermines the whole purpose of the Bill. The whole purpose of the Bill, as the Government understand it, is to produce more farriers and to have an effective registration. I would ask the noble Lord not to press this Amendment but, in the light of what I have said, to look at the matter again.
7.19 p.m.
LORD WIGG: My Lords, I should be much obliged if either the Minister or the noble Lord, Lord Newall, could clear up one point for me. The Amendment contains the words "the Secretary of State". Clause 19 states:
"This Act shall come into operation.. as the Secretary of State"—
et cetera. When I look at the interpretation clause, I see that "the Secretary of State" is not defined. If it had said, "a Secretary of State", of whom there are many, I could understand, but the Minister speaks as if it is a certainty that the Secretary is the Secretary of State for the Home Department; yet it seems to me that the Amendment which we are now considering on Report has been specifically designed to deal with Scotland. How the Secretary of State for the Home Department can make an Order to deal with Scotland is beyond me. On Second Reading I made the point that this Bill had gone up one side of Whitehall and down the other because there was not a natural home for it, that eventually it went round and round in circles in the Home Office and landed up with the Department which deals with cruelty to animals because there was no other Department to deal with it.
I make the point in passing that I thing the House owes a debt of gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Newall, for his interest in the Bill and for giving it an airing. But let us recognise that even if it passes your Lordships' House tonight and subsequently receives a Third Reading, that is the end of it; it is a cul-de-sac because Private Members' time has run

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out in another place. I would suggest to the noble Lord, Lord Newall, that he takes advantage of the triumph which he has achieved and that he should not push his luck.
The facts are that this Bill should not have been handled by the Home Office. I say that with great respect to the Minister and with great respect to his Department. They are not in the least qualified to deal with a Bill of this kind. This Bill should have been dealt with by the Ministry of Agriculture. For that to happen, there has to be a change of policy in Whitehall because many years ago the decision was taken for better or worse—and I think very much for the worse—that the horse should no longer be considered an economic animal. Consequently, when this Bill saw the light of day and went to the Ministry of Agriculture, they said, "Nothing doing; we're not going to have it, because we are not concerned with expenditure on horses. We have no responsibility for horses. Horses are not matters that concern us."
Just to show how far off beam we are in the remarks which have been made so far. it would appear that this Bill deals with Scotland. But what about Middlesex? I do not have the resources to be certain that my researches are accurate, but as I understand it the total number of farriers in the County of Middlesex is two, and the truth of it is that so far no Department in Whitehall knows how many horses there are. They are not absolutely sure how many farriers there are and they are not sure where they are distributed. That is not a good starting point.
What I think Lord Newall has done is to give the Bill an airing. It will not go any further. What he should now do, and I would join my voice with his, is to press the Government to reconsider the position of all horses—the horses in which I am interested and the horses in which other people are interested and to regard the horse as an economic animal. This would have very far-reaching results. At once it would impose upon the Ministry of Agriculture the duty to do what Lord Newall has done, because if the horse is treated as it should be treated and as it is treated by all our partners in the European Economic Community—that is, as an economic animal—then the
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Minister of Agriculture would do something about the training of farriers and would recognise as Lord Newall and his friends recognise, the very difficult situation of getting one's lad placed with farriers. After the lad has had six months' training he can then walk out of the farrier's shop and proclaim to the world, "I am a farrier" and take half of his master's customers with him. In those circumstances, one can understand the master farriers being loath to take on apprentices until they are quite sure that there is going to be a registration scheme and only competent people shall engage in the art of farriery.
I introduced the point about the Secretary of State so as to be enlightened about this point. As it stands, I am completely bewildered by the Amendment in the Bill, but I do not press it. I say that this Bill has gone as far as it will ever go—and perhaps I ought to say in its present form as far as it should go—but that Lord Newall has done much and that he could do much more if he would agree now to withdraw his Bill, either at this stage or at Third Reading, and in the meantime plead, as I am now pleading, that the Minister should talk to his colleagues in his own Department and that the Secretary of State for the Home Department should talk to the Secretary of State for Agriculture and say to him: "Look, chum, this is not my problem. It should not be in the Home Office at all, or in the Scottish Office, although we are all concerned. This problem belongs to you, and it belongs to you not only because of the horse and not only because of farriery but because of the effect it has on veterinary science". We lag behind all of the countries in Western Europe. The Swan Committee has been sitting for years and still has not reported. If that were done, then Lord Newall would have achieved great things with the Bill because he would have got the Government to bring this country into line with the rest of the Common Market countries so that money could be spent not only upon farriery but upon veterinary education.
7.28 p.m.
LORD HELSBY: My Lords, as one of those who has taken a great interest in the Bill as it has gone through its stages in your Lordship's House, I should be

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glad to accept the advice which the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, has suggested if I thought that the Bill, having been taken away, further examined and made the subject of further consultation, could be improved in some substantial respect. I am bound to say that I am not clear about how it could be improved. It suffers from the inevitable difficulty that it is trying to cope with two quite different kinds of problem—the short term and the long term.
We are all agreed on what we want to see in the long term. We want to get rid of the present system under which apprentices break their apprenticeship early on because they see that they can earn a much better living by hiring a van and going round presenting themselves as fully competent to shoe horses. We all know that this is happening up and down the country and that it causes a good deal of damage to horses and infuriates the owners of horses. But if we are to get rid of that long-term problem by insisting upon proper training and registration, surely it is inevitable that in the short run some alleviation, some coming to terms with the harsh realities of the present bad situation, should be permitted.
I cannot see that there is anything wrong with the Amendment of Lord Newall. Indeed, for my part I should be very willing to support it. It is true that it does make things a little untidy. It admits that in certain parts of the country there may be, in the short run, a need for special arrangements to get one through to the period when full registration can be insisted upon and the intentions of the Bill fully carried out. But that kind of makeshift arrangement is probably inevitable, and I do not see why we should not accept it. It is true that in its original form the Amendment was a little tidier when it specified a period of up to five years, but who is to know until the circumstances of the situation are examined whether the right period is three years, or five years, or six years? We would all accept that it cannot be much longer.
Indeed if a longer remission of the application of the full Bill were allowed it would gain in its effect by not drawing the attention of those concerned to the fact that the Bill would be applied before long and that those who had not
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received proper training, and had not qualified themselves to register within that period, would be out of it. So for my part I would wish to support the Amendment rather than see the Bill thrown out on the basis that this is too untidy. We must accept that there must be an untidiness in the short run if we are to achieve the better regulation of the farriery trade in the long run.
VISCOUNT THURSO: My Lords, I am very glad that I managed to reach your Lordships' House just as the noble Lord, Lord Allerton, was rising to support the Amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Newall. I was interested in the points put by the noble Lord, Lord Wigg. In the first place, the noble Lord, Lord Newall, and all of us have been advised by Parliamentary draftsmen that the proper terminology is "The Secretary of State" whether one means one Secretary of State in particular, or all Secretaries of State in general, and that this is common usage which would cover the appropriate Secretary of State in the circumstances. Therefore, I do not think this is a flaw in the Amendment.
I accept and greatly agree with the point made by the noble Lord. Lord Wigg, that the horse should be regarded as an economic animal. This is a matter of some importance and one on which, if the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, will give the necessary leadership, there are many of your Lordship's House who will follow. But it will not in itself register farriers, and at the moment we are discussing the Farriers (Registration) Bill and the Amendment which the noble Lord, Lord Newall, has tabled to it.
I rise to support that Amendment, because it seems to me that it removes the objection which I and the noble Lords, Lord Margadale, Lord Allerton and Lord Burton, and various other noble Lords had to the Bill as it was originally brought to your Lordships' House, the objection being that we did not feel that in areas so remote as Scotland, Wales and perhaps certain other parts of the British Isles—for instance, possibly the Dales and parts of Cornwall—simple registration of farriers would do much to help.
We accept the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Newall, that in recruiting more farriers it is important to raise the status of the farrier and to protect the master

1231
farrier from the apprentice who runs off after six months, and so on. That might happen in the more populous districts, or in districts where there are people with a skill similar to farriery, who might come out at weekends and offer a shoddy, cut-price job to the unsuspecting horseowner. But we do not feel that this argument applies in the rural areas and we have great confidence in the Secretary of State, of whatever Government it may be and for whatever Department he may be responsible.
We feel that, on the whole, this country has been well served by Secretaries of State, who are men of certain discrimination and knowledge and are backed by knowledgeable advisers. Therefore, we feel that if we put this discretion into the hands of the Secretary of State it will be well and wisely used. We may be wrong; it may be that Secretaries of State are particularly foolish people, but we do not believe this to be so. We feel that to give them discretion is no bad thing in any Bill. To give them a period of five years and tie them down to this period is not a good thing, because the problem may be solved in less than five years or may not be solved in seven or even ten years in the more remote areas of Britain. Therefore we accept that the Amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Newall, meets the point of criticism which we put during the earlier stages of this Bill.
The criticisms put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, reminded me of a fairy tale by the brothers Grimm, called The Three Sillies, where the young man's fianceé sat below the axe in the rafters, while the beer poured on to the floor, weeping at the thought that the axe might fall on his yet unborn child's head. This Amendment has been put forward in order to solve—and, indeed, it seems to us to solve it—the problem of the remoter areas by giving discretion to Secretaries of State. I do not feel that this is a foolish thing to do, or that it turns the Bill round the other way. It merely postpones the taking effect of certain parts of the Bill in certain areas but it does not postpone the registration of farriers within those districts. It merely does not enforce it by law. My Lords, I most certainly support this Amendment.
LORD NEWALL: My Lords, as the sponsor of the Bill, I wonder whether I may have leave to speak again. I shall not detain your Lordships long and, obviously, I am grateful for the support that I have received. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, for his opinion which I am always pleased to hear, although I cannot agree that this Bill has gone as far as it can or should go. But I think I should speak in reply only to the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell; and I agree wholeheartedly with everything said by the noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, although I have not seen him for a very long time because I think he has been on some canal or other.
It is a fairy tale to think that all horses and all horse owners are exactly the same. This Bill has been put forward for the benefit of the horses, the horse owners, the farriers and nobody else, and all the interested parties are in agreement that this should happen. I have kept the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, very much informed of everything that I have been doing and he has now sprung a small surprise on me with the advice of his advisers. I am very sorry that this has happened, but I cannot agree with him that this will mess up the Bill. He knows full well, as has already been stated this evening, that the Amendment is tabled for the benefit of peculiar parts of the country. If the Secretary of State thinks they are peculiar enough, there will be a temporary measure to alleviate any problems that can arise from having to have registration at a certain time.
One must realise, if one has registration, that with any luck one will definitely get more farriers coming forward. It will be a proper craft recognised by law. If there is an area which is excluded temporarily, it will not necessarily benefit it if the Secretary of State thinks that it should be omitted, because the point is that the circumstances are probably such that there will be a great many part-time farriers and no full-time farriers at all. We all know that those part-time farriers will probably not register immediately, and we accept that fact. But we want it to be a workable law if we can get it on to the Statute Book.
Therefore, if this Amendment is accepted we know that there will be some farriery available as a temporary measure

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and during that time, when a certain part of the country is omitted, the people in all the horse bodies—and the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, now knows that there are a great many horse bodies—will all do their very best to see that some farriery is available. But it should not necessarily be that in a peculiar part, where everything is rather wild and woolly, there are no farriers at all. I think it should be a possibility, and I accept that the Secretary of State will have enough knowledge and experience to get advice from the proper people and make a good judgment. I therefore ask the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, to review his remarks considerably, because I think he will find that it is not messy, any more than horses in themselves are messy.
LORD WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, with the leave of the House I should like to make a comment or two on what the noble Lord, Lord Newall, has said. But before doing so, may I say to my noble friend Lord Wigg that my understanding of the position is that this is the normal way for the phrase, "Secretary of State" to be used. I believe I am right in saying that the Minister for Agriculture is not a Secretary of State and therefore, as the noble Viscount said, the right terminology has been used.
The noble Lord, Lord Newall, may not think so, but the Government have tried from the beginning to be helpful and to make what we hoped were constructive observations. What I have said this evening to your Lordships was intended to be of some assistance. With my noble friend Lord Wigg, I think it is desirable that if this Bill is to get on the Statute Book it should go from here with the best possible phraseology and wording, and should be as watertight as possible. I am bound to say that the original purpose of the Bill commanded a good deal of merit and support from all sides of the House. It was intended to see that, unless they were skilled and competent and possessed certain qualifications, persons should not be permitted to practise the art—and I use the word "art" advisedly—of farriery.
I am not wishing to be harsh or unkind when I say that this Amendment makes nonsense to some extent of the original intention of the Bill. Among the original intentions of the Bill was the intention
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not only to register farriers and ensure that only competent farriers were let loose on horses, but also to provide, by registration, an inducement, an incentive, to people to come forward to train, the reason being that there is a recognised shortage of farriers. My noble friend Lord Wigg asked how many there are, but I do not think we really know. The figure possibly varies between 1,200 and 1,600—it depends on what sort of periodical you read. We know that there is a shortage, and if there are to be quite substantial areas in the United Kingdom—at the moment, we are talking only about Scotland—
LORD NEWALL: My Lords, we have not mentioned Scotland in the Amendment. We are not talking of any area in particular, nor are we talking about an especially large area. We are talking about an area which the Secretary of State thinks should be excluded. It can be a tiny area and is to be excluded only temporarily.
LORD WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, the noble Lord must bear in mind that I must go on the evidence before the House. The evidence before the House during the Committee stage was that this problem is to be found mainly, if not entirely, in Scotland. The exemption of these areas does not appear to encourage people to train for farriery. I do not think it will encourage them to become registered. I cannot see that if the House accepts this Amendment it will help the main purpose of the Bill, which is to have registered farriers only and to increase the number of farriers in the future. It is for those reasons that I had some doubt in my mind, which I expressed to the noble Lord, as to whether this Amendment will help the Bill. I do not think it will.
LORD WIGG: My Lords, if I crave the indulgence of the House it is only because it is in fashion. I do not want to embarrass my noble friend the Minister, but I do not understand how any Department, short of doing what I have asked—which is to treat the horse as an economic animal—can ever establish the facts on which it is possible to make a sensible order. The Minister will not be able to find out how many horses there are, or how many farriers there are. I stand corrected. I thought for a

1235
moment that fashions had changed, times had changed and that the Secretary was the Secretary of State for Agriculture. Ultimately, it seems to me that the only Ministry in Whitehall which can get that knowledge is the Ministry of Agriculture. Until that happens, I think the Bill will become a load of nonsense.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.

EDUCATION (MENTALLY HANDICAPPED CHILDREN) (SCOTLAND) BILL
7.45 p.m.
Brought from the Commons; read 1*, and to be printed.

LOCAL LOTTERIES BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and to be printed.

MINISTERS OF THE CROWN BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and to be printed.
LORD WIGG: My Lords, on a point of Order, I am completely bewildered. We had an Amendment moved on the Farriers Bill. The Amendment was accepted, but the Bill was not passed.
[The Silting was suspended at 7.48 p.m. and resumed at 8 p.m.]

RENT BILL
8.0 p.m.
Committee stage resumed.
Clause 3 [Recovery of possession of holiday accommodation let on out-of-season tenancies]:
On Question, Whether Clause 3 shall stand part of the Bill?
LORD HYLTON: It seems to me that the whole course of the debate on the various Amendments has drawn attention to the need for a measure of flexibility in the security of tenure for furnished tenants, as opposed to complete and rigid security of tenure right across the board. A number of different special cases have been quoted and argued from both sides
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of the House. I should like to ask the Government to look carefully at this question of excluding from security of tenure leases for a certain known period defined in advance. This may be the key to giving just that little flexibility which is needed. I find myself in a stronger position in suggesting this because in previous housing debates, I have tried to argue for security of tenure for furnished tenants who are families, or who are old people, and for those living in the existing housing stress areas. If those tenants can be included in the general provisions of the Bill, and something could be done to exclude the fixed-period tenancies, then I think we can cover both the special cases which have been raised, and give a little less rigidity and more flexibility throughout the whole of the furnished sector.
LORD SHEPHERD: In response to what the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, has said, certainly I would wish to see in this sphere, as in most legislation, the highest degree of flexibility, because one knows that when legislating, one creates anomalies on one side of the line or the other. I will say to the noble Lord that I have approached this Committee stage and the Bill with no firmly set view. I will read again with great care all that has been said on the previous clauses to the Bill, and if there are improvements, particularly in the area of flexibility, then I will see what can be done. Within the very nature of the beast itself, to a certain extent rent legislation needs to be specific, and where there has been flexibility in the past this has been left to the courts. I will look at what the noble Lord has said. I have much sympathy with what he has in mind, and will undertake, with my advisers, to look at the whole nature of our debate on the previous clauses and see whether there are changes which are possible.
Clause 3 agreed to.
Clause 4 agreed to.
LORD SHEPHERD: I think my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Annan, spoke to Amendment No. 10 on a previous occasion. In view of the fact that they are not present at the moment and in the light of what they said earlier, I do not think it will be their intention to move Amendment No. 10.
Clause 5 [Furnished lettings: increase in rateable value limits]:
BARONESS YOUNG BARONESS YOUNG moved Amendment No. 10A:
Page 5, line 19, leave out ("£1,500") and insert ("£750").
The noble Baroness said: On behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, I beg to move Amendment No. 10A. The noble Lord has already spoken to this point on a previous discussion on whether Clause 2 should stand part. By this Amendment, the noble Lord is concerned to exclude from the provisions of the Bill certain very highly-rated flats, particularly used by people in the Diplomatic Service who are in London for a very short time, or by certain businessmen who come to London for business reasons and require somewhere to live. Both groups of people by definition are here for temporary periods of time.
The noble Lord, Lord Bethell, is anxious that so far as the members of the Diplomatic Service are concerned, it should be possible for the flats that they occupy to become vacant when their terms of duty is over. It would be helpful if the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, could clarify for the Record the position of these people, and also the position of business people who occupy these expensive flats, again for short periods of time, while they are working in this country. Apart from the benefit that may accrue to the economy generally, I am advised that these people bring into this country enormous amounts of foreign currency. Therefore, they can be said to be making a direct contribution to our balance of payments.
However, I think the principal argument is that both groups of people are in effect here for short periods of time. These people require somewhere to live and not to be subject to security of tenure, because they often would be able to find somewhere else to live if they had to. In this case the expensive furnished flats are really suitable only for these people doing this kind of work. I beg to move.
LORD SHEPHERD: I listened to the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, with great interest when he spoke earlier and sought to reply to him. It seems to me that there is only one area of difficulty, that relating to those individuals who may
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be occupying premises in their own name, but are clearly doing so on behalf of a Government or a company. I was not able to help the noble Lord on that matter.
With regard to the rateable value, it is fair to point out that the 1965 Act established the same rateable value limits of £400 inside and £200 outside Greater London for both Part I—protected—and Part VI tenancies. Section 89 of the Housing Finance Act of 1972, which I think the noble Baroness, Lady Young, will remember, provided that these limits should be increased, following the 1973 rating revaluation, by Order. However, this provision was repealed as regards protected tenancies by the Counter-Inflation Act of 1973, which raised the limits applicable to those tenancies on and after April 1, 1973, to £1,500 inside and £750 outside Greater London, while those applicable to Part VI lettings on and after that date were raised by Order under the Housing Finance Act to £1,000 inside and £500 outside the Greater London area.
This clause restores the previous parity by raising the limits applicable to Part VI lettings. I can say to the noble Baroness that I think it would be wrong to make any exception or alteration to this since the amounts now specified in the Bill take into account the inflationary consequences of the last few years. I do not think it would be right to make a special exception merely to be able to provide some arrangement for a very small number of people. Since the noble Lord, Lord Bethell is not in his place. perhaps he may care to look later at what I have said and decide whether he should pursue it on another occasion.
BARONESS YOUNG: I should like to thank the noble Lord. Lord Shepherd. As he suggests, we will study what he has said and consider whether to put down an Amendment again. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 5 agreed to.
Clause 6 [Furnished lettings: amendments relating to control and registration of rents]:
8.10 p.m.
On question, Whether Clause 6 shall stand part of the Bill?
BARONESS YOUNG: I should like to ask a question on Clause 6(3)(2A) with regard to rates. I wonder whether the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, could clarify the position. I shall quite understand if he is not able to do so this evening, and if he would write to me I should be perfectly satisfied. I want to make sure what is the position with regard to the fixing of a fair rent in the case where the landlord pays the rates on a flat. In that case he will presumably be responsible for the rates. But what happens in the case where the rent includes the rates on the flat? Are these automatically added on top of the fair rent, or is some special calculation made?
LORD SHEPHERD: I understand that subsection (3) requires in the register of rents the inclusion of a reference to the fact that where the rates are borne by the landlord or the superior landlord, this is to be noted but it is not to affect the amount of the rent to be registered. I wonder whether those brief words extracted from my brief give the noble Baroness the information she requires? If there is anything further she would like to know, naturally I shall be happy to correspond with her.
BARONESS YOUNG: I will read what the noble Lord has said. This is rather a complicated matter, where rates are included in the rent. I think it is necessary to have clarification. I will study what the noble Lord has said and, if necessary, we can confer again.
Clause 6 agreed to.
Clause 7 agreed to.
LORD GIFFORD LORD GIFFORD moved Amendment No. 11:
After Clause 7 insert the following new clause:
Fixed term tenancies.
". Any tenancy of a dwelling-house for a term certain which does not exceed 2 years shall not come to an end merely by effluxion of time, but unless and until determined by lawful notice to quit or by surrender or by forfeiture shall continue as a tenancy by holding over; and any provision in any contract shall be of no effect in so far as it purports to exclude the operation of the foregoing provision."
The noble Lord said: This Amendment concerns short fixed term tenancies, and before turning to the terms of the
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Amendment itself may I draw the attention of the Committee to the provisions about short term fixed tenancies as they are now set out in the Bill. To do that one has to look at Schedule 2 to the Bill and the proposed new Section 5A, which contains the resident landlord exemption. One should say at once that as far as non-resident landlords are concerned it will not matter whether a fixed term or a periodic term is granted, the full Rent Act security will apply; but so far as resident landlords are concerned, it will be open to the landlord to make with his tenant an agreement for a term not exceeding two years.
The question then arises: what happens when that period, let us say six months, expires? The landlord cannot grant a second fixed term of six months, or any period, and indeed rightly so, because then he would fall foul of section 5A(2) which lays down that the resident landlord exemption only applies to periodic tenancies and to fixed term tenancies which are the first fixed term tenancies granted by that be he would want to make a further agreement with his tenant, to grant him a periodic tenancy to succeed the original first six months. If he does that, however, he will fall foul of subsection (3) of the new section 5A because subsection (3)(a) states that the section—that is to say the resident landlord exemption—
"does not apply to a tenancy which is granted to a person if immediately before it was granted he was the lessee of any premises under a contract to which part VI of this Act applies;"—
that is to say, a resident landlord contract—and (b) the premises comprised in the tenancy are either the same or include part of the premises included in the other contract.
As I understand this subsection, what it means is this: that when the first fixed term has come to an end the landlord is on the horns of a dilemma. He must either bring proceedings to evict the tenant or, if he allows the tenant to stay, he will find himself saddled with a fully protected tenancy. I am talking, of course, about resident landlords. Under the Bill as at present drafted there is no way whereby the landlord who initially grants a fixed term tenancy can convert that into a periodic tenancy without it being protected, because of the peculiar provisions

1241
of subsections (2) and (3). I want very much to know, first of all, whether that view that I take of the Act is right, and, secondly, if there are proposals to word it differently so as to bring into effect what I understand to be the Government's intention, that a resident landlord can escape from the rent tribunal if he grants an initial fixed term but thereafter he should be able to grant a periodic tenancy which would then be subject to the rent tribunal provisions.
Having tried to explain the present provisions regarding fixed terms, which I suggest are something of an absurdity in the way they are drafted, may I now come back to the Amendment I propose, which is also not a very easy Amendment to understand at first reading. There is a peculiar difference so far as fixed term tenancies are concerned between English law and Scots law. Under the law in Scotland, a fixed term tenancy does not automatically come to an end when the period expires, but on the part of the landlord who wants to bring it to an end there has to be a notice to quit. Since there has to be a notice to quit, the tenant then has a right to refer that notice to quit to the rent tribunal, and he is, therefore, entitled to the protection which the rent tribunal affords. That is not the case in England. In England, a landlord can grant a six-month tenancy and once the period expires the tenancy comes to an end. That means there is no need for a notice to quit, and thus there is no possibility of the rent tribunal having jurisdiction. Those who have been familiar with the ways of landlords in London know that at present the easiest way of avoiding even the rent tribunal security is for the landlord to grant successive fixed term tenancies. I am glad to know that under the Bill he is not going to be able to do this.
However, there seems to be a good deal of virtue in the Scottish provision. It was a virtue that was recognised by the Francis Committee, who said at page 161 of their Report, having explained the difference:
"We think that English law might with advantage be brought into line with Scots law in this respect, and we recommend that a Part VI fixed term tenancy should require a month's notice in writing to terminate it, such notice to expire at the end of the fixed term or at any time thereafter."
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If that were implemented then all tenants of resident landlords, whether they were periodic or fixed term, would then have the right to go to the rent tribunal; they could then look at all the circumstances, and decide whether or not it was right to give security.
Quite apart from criticising the erroneous way in which I believe the Bill to be drafted at present, I still wish to maintain this Amendment, which states that in order to bring English law into line with Scottish law, a fixed term tenancy of under two years shall not come to an end merely by effluxion of time, but shall continue unless it is determined by notice to quit or by surrender or forfeiture. I would urge the Government to consider whether it is not right that the Scottish provision, as the Francis Committee indicated, is not a better way of bringing within the rent tribunal ambit these short, fixed-term lettings.
8.22 p.m.
LORD SHEPHERD: My noble friend referred to the horns of a dilemma for the landlord, and seeks to allow him to let on periodic tenancies to the same tenant after one fixed-term contract. The Government recognise that subsection (3) of new Section 5A should be subject to Amendment to relate it to a protected or statutory tenancy and not to a Part VI contract. I would hope that we shall be able to introduce this Amendment at the next stage of the Bill.
In regard to fixed-term tenancies, the Government do not believe that they should necessarily be capable of extension in the manner proposed. There are circumstances in which they are clearly suited to the interests of the tenant as well as the landlord. This may well be so in the case of the resident landlord who knows that he has spare accommodation in his home for a limited period—until perhaps a child grows up and needs extra space, or until a relative comes to live with a landlord. Such accommodation may well suit a tenant who has only temporary need for a home. These are cases where there is a genuine use for a fixed-term contract, and it would clearly be unreasonable to expect a landlord to let in such circumstances if he could not be sure of getting possession in time to fulfil his obligations. In my view,

1243
it would also be unreasonable to deny the resident landlord the right to let fixed term once to a tenant with whom he will be sharing the building in which he lives.
This is a very difficult area. That is my initial response to what my noble friend has said. I shall look carefully at what he has said when I see Hansard. I hope, on those conditions, and in view of the fact that I recognise the point about the horns of the dilemma for a landlord, and of our willingness to meet it by Amendment, that he will feel that we have gone some way to meet him on this Amendment he is proposing.
LORD GIFFORD: There are two points I would make. I am sorry that we do not have an Amendment before us. Obviously, I should like to look at a subsequent Amendment to see how it would affect the Bill as it stands, and how it would perhaps reduce the need for the Amendment I am proposing. I think that it will substantially reduce the need, since it will not raise this difficult position which would otherwise have arisen, on which it would have been quite impossible to advise either landlords or tenants.
I would ask my noble friend, even so, to see whether the Scottish provision might not be usefully applied here. If, in the cases that he mentions, a landlord quite plainly needs the premises to do repairs, or to house a neighbour, and if particularly he has made that very plain to the tenant at the beginning of the tenancy, then that is clearly a case where the rent tribunal would not be disposed to grant a very substantial amount of security, and I recognise the fairness of the situation. It seems that if they have got by in Scotland with a situation where all fixed-term tenancies are subject to rent tribunal review, then it can avoid injustice in England to bring about the same result.
The injustice I am seeking to overcome is that where there is a fixed-term letting which the rent tribunal cannot touch, it puts the tenant into the landlord's power, at any rate for that initial period of the first letting. In other words, if he complains about the rent, or the state of repair, he is likely not to get his fixed term converted, as it would be if my noble friend's Amendment comes through, into a periodic tenancy. That, in the
1244
initial period of a letting, puts the tenants into a difficult position. It seems that the rent tribunal can deal with the other points which might militate against this Amendment being accepted. Having said that, I am sure that my noble friend will review my Amendment in the light of his, and I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
LORD SHEPHERD: I undertake to look at the Scottish legislation to see whether, as in the past, it would be helpful in England.
BARONESS YOUNG: Is the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, suggesting a new clause in substitution for subsection (3) of Case 5A of Schedule 2, so that you would have another Amendment to take that out? Am I right in thinking that the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, wishes to meet the point of this case, and will be bringing forward a Government Amendment to amend Case 5A(3)?
LORD SHEPHERD: I am not sure whether it will be a new subsection. I have in mind an Amendment to the subsection. I would certainly say to both the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, and the noble Baroness, that I shall see whether I can get advance copies of our proposed Amendment so that we could perhaps consult before it is placed on the Marshalled List.
BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD: May I say one word about this before the noble Lord withdraws his Amendment, because I have been listening to this discussion with interest. I do not know about the English law, but I know about the Scottish law. Although it has advantages it also has disadvantages. When the noble Lord looks at it, I hope that he will realise there are some severe disadvantages. For instance, if the landlord has a really genuine reason for wanting to get back some of his property because there is a son growing up, or he wants to house his daughter, it is exceedingly difficult to get the tenant out unless the tenant has gone there on the understanding that at some point or other he will probably have to move. If he cuts up rough and is disagreeable, then it is extremely hard to do anything.
I quite understand the views of the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, and that people do not want landlords to be able

1245
to turn anybody out at a moment's notice, which would be equally wrong, but there is a case for realising that it also has great disadvantages if it is too rigid. Although some of the rent tribunals are very good, some of them are not so good—you never quite know. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd—I am sure he will, because he knows Scotland very well—will realise that they do not always have the right thing, although it may be better than in England.
LORD SHEPHERD: Again I shall say that I will read carefully what the noble Baroness has said. I now understand why my noble friend Lord Gifford drew upon Scottish legislation in support of his Amendment. Quite clearly, the landlords in Scotland are not very keen about the existing legislation. I will look at what the noble Baroness has said and I will not even mind consulting her.
LORD GIFFORD: In answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Young, one of the intentions of my Amendment was to resolve what seemed to me the absolutely insoluable problem presented by the Bill; that is to say, that at the end of a fixed term tenancy the landlord is saddled either with the necessity to evict the tenant or with the burden of a fully protected tenant on his hands. My Amendment would solve that problem by allowing the fixed term tenancy to continue ad infinitum until a notice to quit was served. If, as he has indicated he will, my noble friend brings in an Amendment to solve that problem in a different way, there are still substantial virtues in my Amendment even if the Bill is changed. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 8 agreed to.
Clauses 9 and 10 agreed to.
.32 p.m.
LORD MELCHETT LORD MELCHETT moved Amendment No. 12:
After Clause 10 insert the following new clause—
Provisions as to notices to quit.
".—(1) Without prejudice to the provisions of section 16 of the Rent Act 1957, no notice given by a landlord to quit any pre
1246
mises let as a dwelling-house shall be valid unless—

(a) it is given in writing; and

(b) it contains upon its face in letters no smaller than the text of the notice to quit the words set out in Schedule (Words to be contained in notices to quit referred to in section (Provisions as to notices to quit)) to this Act.

(2) Any tenant who is induced by a failure to comply with subsection (1) above to surrender a tenancy of a dwelling-house shall be entitled to recover damages from any persons by whom or on whose behalf the notice to quit is given as if in an action for wrongful eviction."
The noble Lord said: I should like to speak to this Amendment on behalf of myself and my noble friend Lord Gifford. The proposed new clause is of not quite the same type as the other Amendments in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Gifford. We feel that it would help to bring the provisions of the Bill, which we welcome, to the attention of all the people it seeks to protect. The provision lays down that the Government should make regulations to say what form a notice to quit should take and what information it should contain on the face of it. I shall not go into this point in very great detail, partly because I spoke about it at some length on Second Reading, and partly because I hope the Government will have some good news for us regarding the Amendment. I hope that noble Lords will not think I am brief because we have a poor case: we have a particularly strong case on this Amendment.
We were asked on Second Reading by the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, to provide evidence that when tenants were issued with notices to quit they either misunderstood the form of words contained in them or were ignorant of some of the rights which they have under the existing rent legislation. I think we can safely say that we have managed to provide the Government with a great deal of support for the Amendment from people involved, particularly in housing stress areas. Clearly, statistical evidence is very difficult to come by, because people who are unaware of their rights and who receive a notice to quit are, by definition, unlikely to go to a lawyer or a housing aid group and ask what their rights are. They are ignorant and, given a notice which says that they have to

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quit and deliver up possession of the premises, they do just that. There is a widespread feeling among people who work in this area that this is a major problem, and that very large numbers of tenants get notice to quit and just go, whether or not they have rights and whether they are furnished or unfurnished tenants.
The Amendment seeks to lay down a prescribed form to which notices to quit would have to conform, and which would inform tenants of their rights. I cannot see how anybody can have any objection to this. After all, if Parliament passes legislation to give protection to people and to give them rights, nobody can really take exception if people are informed about those rights. The present Bill and the Rent Acts have specifically given people rights when they receive a notice to quit from a landlord, and it seems that the most sensible time to tell people of their rights is when they receive the notice to quit, which is why we suggest that the notice to quit should inform people of their rights on the face of it.
Noble Lords may be aware that the present notice to quit comes with a very archaic form of words on the face of it, and that it tells tenants to quit and deliver up possession. There is no requirement to tell the tenant that he has the right to security, nor to tell him that he can go to the rent tribunal, nor to tell him that receiving a notice to quit does not mean hat he has to leave there and then. I hope that the Government will feel disposed to accept the Amendment. In all future cases where people are given notice to quit. we should at least have a guarantee that if they can read what is written on the notice they will know what their rights are.
LORD AVEBURY: I cannot refrain from intervening for one moment to say that in the Standing Committee on the Rent Act 1965, I moved an Amendment providing for statutory notices to quit. I have drawn the attention of the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, to the debate on that occasion, in response to his request for evidence that a provision of this kind is necessary. Although, as the noble Lord, Lord Melchett, has said, it is very difficult to find evidence of invalid notices to quit being issued and of tenants being
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pressured into giving up their homes by the use of such invalid notices, the practice has been going on for a very long time. I think that the Department of the Environment, if it had wanted to, could have made inquiries before the Bill was brought before the House. It was in a much better position to obtain information than any noble Lord, however well-informed on the subject he might be.
The only doubt I might have about the Amendment is whether it is sensible to put the words in the Schedule to the Bill. if one wished to alter it afterwards. amending legislation would be needed. What I suggest if, as the noble Lord, Lord Melchett, appears to think, the Minister will give a favourable response on this, and as he will not accept the wording which is down on the Marshalled List—Ministers never do—this should be drafted so as to allow the Secretary of State by Order to specify what should be contained in the notice to quit. That means that, if any further devices come to light which were not anticipated at the time when your Lordships or another place were considering the Bill, it can very easily be put right afterwards. Subject to that minor criticism, I am very much behind the noble Lords and their Amendment.
LORD HYLTON: In support of this Amendment, I should like to say that over the years I have advised a good many tenants about their rights after receiving a notice to quit. They could go either to the county court in cases of unfurnished tenancies, or to the rent tribunal in the case of furnished tenancies. But very few knew this, and I think the records of housing aid centres will show that substantial numbers of tenants just went away after receiving a notice to quit and without any further process of law. I am sorry that I have not brought evidence on that point with me, but I am sure that it is obtainable.
LORD SHEPHERD: I have read with very great interest what my noble friends Lord Melchett and Lord Gifford said on Second Reading, and I have listened with great care to what my noble friend has said in introducing the Amendment and to all those who have supported him. I have a good deal of sympathy for the Amendment, as I should have if I am to be logical and consistent, for I persuaded

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your Lordships' House to pass the Consumer Credit Bill in rapid time, and it was recognised that the basis of that Bill was the right to know. But there is a difference between providing legislation for, on the one hand, consumer credit and, on the other, dealing with rent and the question of the relationship between landlord and tenant, for, in many cases, one is dealing not with companies nor with any organised body that has the machinery for dealing with a more formalised approach when one is dealing with maybe small landlords and small tenants.
Nevertheless I can say that the Government, despite the difficulties, think it is worth studying the idea that a notice to quit a dwelling let on a protected tenancy or Part 6 contract must, in order to be valid, be in writing, with the possibility of using it as a source of information or advice to the tenant. I can therefore give the noble Lords an assurance that if they are willing to withdraw the Amendment the Government will examine the possibilities in the hope of working out some proposal which would give tenants further protection in this way without serious damage to the principle that legal procedures should not create for private people traps avoidable only at heavy cost in professional advice. The aim would be to introduce such a measure, if a workable proposal can be evolved, either in the Bill at a later stage or it may be perhaps more convenient and suitable for inclusion in the Housing Bill which we shall be receiving in two or three weeks' time.
I have expressed the Government's good intentions in this matter. If it is feasible to find a solution that will meet, what I am sure, are the wishes of the Committee, we shall do so, and I shall be happy to consult with the noble Lords. Lord Melchett and Lord Gifford, and any other noble Lords who have spoken, to see whether we can find a formula that meets the hopes and the wishes of those who have spoken.
LORD MELCHETT: I am grateful to my noble friend for that reply. I have a couple of points to make on what he said. First, providing this information of notice to quit will help landlords as well as tenants. One of the cases which we supplied to him was of a landlord who clearly did not understand what on earth
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they were meant to be doing, because even after receiving legal advice on no less than two occasions, it took them a further attempt to get a valid notice to quit. Obviously the need for information on both sides is great. The other point concerning the mention of consumer credit is that here we are trying to give advice to small landlords and individuals. That is why we were urging that it should go on the notice to quit, because that is something inevitably that both parties, or both individuals, are bound to see. However, I am grateful to my noble friend for his assurance to accept something along these lines if at all possible.
LORD GIFFORD: Before my noble friend withdraws the Amendment the question of evidence was raised on Second Reading and was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton. It is worth putting on Record that following the Second Reading I canvassed the views of a number of law centres, housing aid centres and other organisations. The response was quite remarkable. Within a few days I received letters from four law centres, four housing aid centres, the Citizen's Rights Office, a long letter from the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux and a powerful letter from Professor John Greve, all responding immediately and positively to the suggestion of such an Amendment as this. Many of them telephoned me with cases they had come across which made it clear how valuable this Amendment would be. My noble friend has the material which they provided. I wish to add only that I would certainly accept the suggestion that the matter should be dealt with by way of Orders and Regulations rather than by specific words in the Bill. We have indicated the kind of information which we feel ought to be included.
LORD MELCHETT: I would add to that impressive list, Shelter, who wrote to me, the Child Poverty Action Group and at least one other housing aids centre, again, all in favour of this Amendment. As the Government will bear that in mind I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
8.51 p.m.
LORD GIFFORD LORD GIFFORD moved Amendment No. 12A.
After Clause 10 insert the following new clause:
Provisions regarding the occupation of a dwelling-house by two or more persons.
".—(1) Where two or more persons together enjoy exclusive occupation of a dwelling-house under two or more contracts, those contracts shall be deemed to constitute a contract to which the relevant part of the Rent Act shall apply.
(2) Where under a contract to which the relevant part of the Rent Act applies, including a contract deemed to be such by virtue of the preceding subsection, two or more persons are entitled to occupy a dwelling-house, any one or more of them may refer the entire contract to the Rent Tribunal under the provisions of the relevant part of the Rent Act."
The noble Lord said: This Amendment appears on an extra sheet which was circulated at the beginning of the afternoon. It deals with a small but quite important potential loophole which was noticed by the Francis Committee where a number of usually young people are sharing a flat or a house. It has come to light —it was noticed by the Francis Committee—that in a number of cases where three or four people were sharing a flat the landlord, instead of granting a tenancy to them all jointly, would make separate agreements whereby each of them had the right to live in the flat but none of them had exclusive occupation. The effect of this is that the contract is neither a letting under the Rent Act, nor does it confer exclusive occupation which is needed to bring it into Part 6 of the Rent Act and, therefore, the jurisdiction of the rent tribunal. This was a dodge which the Francis Committee recommended ought to be changed, and I should add it would be covered by subsection (1) of the proposed new clause. Subsection (2) deals with a slightly different point: namely, that where a number of people share a flat which is subject to the rent tribunal jurisdiction, if one of them wanted to refer the matter to the rent tribunal, either to reduce rent or security of tenure, he must obtain the concurrence of the others. For instance, if three people occupy a flat and a notice to quit is given, and one is content to move out and does so, one of the other two has no right to go to the rent tribunal because the reference must be made by both. That is another small point which I have sought to cover by the second part of the proposed new clause. I should be grateful to know what view the Govern-
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ment take on each of these small separate points about sharing accommodation. I beg to move.
LORD SHEPHERD: As my noble friend said the Francis Committee on Rent Acts observed that this appeared to be a loophole permitting evasion of Part 6 and recommended that where two or more people together enjoyed exclusive occupation of the same accommodation under two or more contracts that those contracts shall be deemed to constitute a contract to which Part 6 applies! The Government agree with the desirability of bringing leases of dwellings occupied in common within the jurisdiction of the rent tribunals. What is doubtful, however, is the wisdom of achieving this by providing that separate contracts under which lessees occupy should be deemed to be one contract. Whatever effect this would have on the rights and obligations of the lessees or between themselves and between them and the lessor, the drawback to this approach emerges clearly from subsection (2), to which my noble friend referred. Subsection (2) will entitle any one of the occupiers in common to refer to the rent tribunal the deemed single contract which subsection (1) would create out of the separate contracts each co-occupier had with their lessee, thus enabling him to effect to refer a co-occupier's contract to a tribunal. whether the co-occupier wished it or not or indeed knew of the reference. It would not be acceptable for a private person to be enabled in any circumstances to interfere in such a way in a contract to which he is not a party. The Government propose that they should look into the possibility of amending Part VI in such a way as to enable tribunals to entertain references of contracts under which the lessee is entitled to occupy residential accommodation in common with others, without the subsequent decision affecting the contracts of the co-occupiers, who would of course, if a satisfactory provision could be evolved, be equally entitled to refer their own contracts to the tribunal. If a suitable measure can be worked out in time, an Amendment to introduce it will be proposed at a later stage of this Bill. This is a very complicated area, and if we are not able to do it in your Lordships' House we shall certainly undertake to sec that it is done in the other place.

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I hope that, with that assurance, my noble friends will feel that I have sought to meet their case, and will withdraw their Amendment.
LORD GIFFORD: I am certainly impressed by that assurance, which seems to me to underline the value of having raised some of these matters at this stage, because it may well be that it will take a week or two (by which time the Bill will be in the Commons) in order to work out the right approach. As I understand it, what my noble friend is saying is that he likes in principle the first part of my Amendment, although he is not very happy about the second part. I am certainly sufficiently pleased by his favourable acceptance of the first part in principle to have hopes for the future, and I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment at this stage.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clauses 11 and 12 agreed to.
Clause 13 [Short title, citation, application, commencement and extent]:
8.52 p.m.
LORD GIFFORD LORD GIFFORD moved Amendment No. 13:
Page 10, line 16, leave out from ("operation") to ("the") in line 17 and insert (" on the day after").
The noble Lord said: During the debate today we have spoken of the need to get this Bill into law quickly and because of that which is obviously right, I was a little concerned to see that the Bill is not going to come into operation until one month after it is passed. While I know that there are regulations to be promulgated, it seems to me that at least some of the provisions ought to come into force immediately. What will happen over the next two months is this. During the month of July a number of possession orders are going to be made in the county courts against tenants who would be entitled to protection under this Bill if it were then law. Those possession orders are going to fall to be executed during the month of August, since the normal delay period is 28 days. During the month of August the courts are on vacation, and I think it will be impossible to suspend the operation of any warrant during the one-month interval after Parliament has clearly stated its intention that the Bill
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should be law but before it actually comes into effect.
I would therefore wish the matter to be looked at to see whether at least the key passages giving protection, and the passages enabling the courts to suspend the execution of possession orders if they would not have been made had the Bill been law, could not be brought into operation immediately after Parliament has passed the Act. If that is not done, I would wish to know what steps can be taken, for instance by way of directives to rent tribunals and, if such can be given, to the officers of county courts and bailiffs, to try to delay the eviction of tenants who would, by the end of August, if that is the likely timetable, be entitled not to be evicted. It disturbs me that in the case of a Bill which is treated, and rightly treated, as a matter of urgency there is this month's delay built in. I beg to move.
LORD SHEPHERD: The effect of this Amendment would be to bring the Bill into operation the day after Royal Assent. A delay of one month between Royal Assent and the coming into force of a new Act is in fact a common occurrence. It is desirable to allow a reasonable time for the provisions as finally enacted to become generally known, and for prints of the Bill to become available to the public. As we have heard, the Amendment is prompted by the fear that the Bill will come into effect too late to protect those tenants whose landlords served notice to quit as soon as the Government announced their intention to give them security or tenure. The tenants in this position, however, should be safe from eviction provided they have used the means already available to them to delay the effects of a notice to quit.
If they had applied to a rent tribunal when they received a notice to quit, its operation would have been suspended for up to six months; and even if the rent tribunal had not been willing to repeat a period of suspension that had already been granted and had recently run out, the tenant can remain until an order for possession is made against him in the courts. Assuming a speedy passage through both Houses — and I am sure this will be the wish of this House and of another place — the Bill should be laid well before these temporary safeguards

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are exhausted. Further, the transitional provisions of paragraph 2 of Schedule 3 serve to protect the tenant where his tenancy comes to an end before the commencement date.
Perhaps I may say to my noble friend that I carefully examined whether it would be possible to bring this Bill into effect as suggested in the Amendment. Although it would have given some protection to some people who may not be quite included in what I have said, on balance, taking the need to have regard to an important function of the landlord and the wish not to put a landlord into a position of breaking the law quite unknowingly (but that, as the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, will know, is no defence), we have come to the conclusion that the decision is right that there should be this one month lapse between Royal Assent and the actual enactment of the Bill.
BARONESS YOUNG: I thank the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, for that assurance. Quite apart from this important point that the landlord could unknowingly be breaking the law, the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, undertook to look at this question of producing some kind of document which would explain this Bill to a number of people. I really think that if it became law immediately after Royal Assent an enormous number of people could find themselves affected by it without really understanding what was happening to them, and this really would be very unfair to those people. I think it is very important that justice should be seen to be done to everybody in these cases, and I would have thought that, with the assurance that the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, has given about those who might be evicted, the Bill ought to be left as it is drafted.
LORD GIFFORD: I should like to say that I certainly agree with the noble Baroness in her suggestion that what the Bill does should be made known in a simple and easy to read leaflet, and I would hope that that is going to be done. I should certainly like to study the answer which my noble friend has given about the delay period, and both here and, it may be, in another place the reasons that he has given can be examined. I certainly remember — and I am quite sure that the noble Lord, Lord Avebury,
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remembers — that certain Acts (one thinks of the Immigration Act 1968) were brought into operation almost on the hour they passed, let alone there being a delay of a month. Certainly there is precedent for bringing an Act into operation on the day after the day on which it is passed; but I do not wish to press the matter, and I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 13 agreed to.
Schedule 1 [Consequential amendments of Rent Act]:
LORD MELCHETT LORD MELCHETT moved Amendment No. 14:
Page 11, line 11, after ("court,") insert "substantially").
The noble Lord said: I should like to speak, if I may, to Amendments Nos. 14 and 15 together. These two Amendments are to the new Case, Case 3A, which is set out in Schedule 1, Part 1, of the Bill. This case gives grounds for landlords who are providing furniture for their tenants to go to the courts to ask for a tenant to be evicted if that tenant has ill-treated the furniture.
This case parallels the existing Case 3 in the Schedules to the consolidated Rent Acts which give the landlord power to take the tenant to court when the tenant has damaged the fabric of the building. It seems to me that that Case has been transferred straight over so that exactly the same provisions apply to furniture now as have applied to the fabric of the building in the past. Our Amendments to this Case seek to do one thing; that is, to make some distinction between damage to the fabric of the property — which I think all noble Lords will agree is a fairly serious thing for the landlord and a fairly substantial thing for the tenant to undertake — and damage to furniture which can be of an extremely minor nature. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, gave us an instance on Second Reading of, I think it was, putting a glass down on a table, which led to his expulsion from some premises.
Damage to furniture is a much more difficult area, I think noble Lords will agree, than damage to property. Furniture can be put into a property in a very dilapidated condition and since the passing of the 1965 Act a large number

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of premises have been furnished in order to avoid the provisions of that Act, and it is the common experience of all people working in the housing field that a large number of landlords have put in very dilapidated furniture indeed. They have shoved in anything they couldget their hands on in order to get their premises outside the control of the previous Rent Act. There are already, therefore, a large number of furnished premises with poor to miserable furniture in them. Very rarely, if ever, is there — certainly in the cheaper rented accommodation — a schedule or list of furniture that was put in or what condition it was in when supplied by the landlord. Because furnished tenants have not been given security in the past, no furnished tenant has ever dreamt of taking his landlord to court to complain about the condition of the furniture. That is the quickest way known to anyone of getting oneself evicted from a property.
Furniture is not the same as the fabric of the property, and this Amendment seeks to distinguish between them and to make sure that the courts can evict people only if they have done two things: first, that the damage to the furniture was substantial (and the court would be under an obligation to see from the evidence that the substantial deterioration of the furniture had been caused by the tenant); secondly, and probably more important, the court — and this is Amendment No. 15 — will have to be of the opinion that such deterioration cannot in all the circumstances be compensated for by an award of damages. It is true to say that the court can at the present time award damages to the landlord rather than to evict the tenant. All that this Amendment seeks to do is to place the court under a statutory obligation to examine the possibility of awarding damages; in other words that it will not be possible for a court to say on hearing a case, "This is so bad, we will evict the tenant without more ado." They will have at least to consider in all the circumstances whether an award of damages will not be sufficient.
Given the distinction which I believe should be drawn between damage to the fabric of the property and damage to furniture and all the difficulties that can arise, and undoubtedly do arise over the sort of furniture which is provided, the
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condition it is in, whether or not the landlord has maintained it properly and who exactly is to blame for any deterioration anyhow, it is important to make sure that the court is under an absolute obligation to see whether it is possible to compensate for any damage in cash rather than by evicting the tenant from his home. I beg to move.
BARONESS YOUNG: Before the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, replies to these two Amendments, I wonder whether he could help me over this Schedule. I think I understand the reason why Case 3A has been added to Schedule 3 to the Rent Act. It is of course to make a comparable new case to the case for damage to the external fabric of an unfurnished tenancy. I wonder whether he would perhaps, in answering the two Amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Melchett, be able to indicate to us how he sees this Case working? My information is that already the courts find it very difficult to determine cases brought under Case 3 of Schedule 3 and in this new Case 3A would find it almost impossible. There would be required, before there was any letting, a complete inventory of what the house or flat contained, probably backed up with photographs so that everybody knew exactly what the condition of the property, the furniture and the fittings were when it was let if the landlord was going to bring a successful case under this new Case 3A. Because the fact would be that the landlord might say, "Well. the tenant has damaged the table" and the tenant would argue, "No, the table was damaged when I moved in". It will be impossible for a court to determine who is right in this respect.
The only people I can see who will benefit from Case 3A will be the valuers and, as one of them said to me, "It is good business for us because we shall be called in on every case." But I find it very difficult to believe that that was the intention of the Government when they included it. I hope they will explain how they would recommend someone to go about establishing the kind of necessary evidence that will be called for in Case 3A and perhaps they will explain whether they expect every landlord to undertake a complete inventory with photographs of the property, in order that everybody, landlord and tenant alike. can know exactly what they are getting.
LORD AVEBURY: I just want to remark that in the case of the expensive lettings we were talking about earlier, where the noble Baroness was saying that she agreed with her noble friend that the oil companies and foreign embassies who took properties, where the furniture might be worth thousands of pounds, in the name of one of their employees and certain difficulties would have arisen, at least in those instances, I think the noble Baroness would agree with me, it is customary for the landlord to have a complete inventory taken for the purposes of insurance and also for the purposes of recovering any damages which are normally provided for in the tenancy agreement. At least in those instances there would not be any difficulty in the courts ascertaining whether a piece of furniture had been wilfully damaged by the tenants, or the silver had been "knocked off", or whatever. But where you come down to the more normal type of furnished tenancy where the equipment is probably not worth very much anyway, I think it will be a matter of common sense for the courts to see whether the furniture originally provided had been damaged or whether it was likely to have been damaged, according to the condition at the time. If the furniture was originally in rather a poor condition and that was not specified in any schedule attached to the tenancy agreement, then it could be simply a matter of argument between the landlord and the tenant; and, based on the unsupported word of either of them, the courts would have difficulty in determining what damage had been done and how much. But in those cases presumably the furniture would be of so little value in the first place that the granting of possession under Case 3A would he unlikely to happen. It is only where the furniture is of some considerable value in relation to the amount of rent paid under the tenancy that it becomes of importance.
9.10 p.m.
LORD SHEPHERD: In reply to the noble Baroness, I would say that my only experience of living in furnished premises was when I used to come home from Singapore on my six months' leave and would take rented accommodation in Edinburgh. Whether or not it was because they were Scots I do not know, but we always had a good inventory and — as the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, has
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said — a good description of what was in the house, and if one disagreed with what the landlord had in mind then one drew his attention to it and reached an agreement. However, I accept that in some cases there may be a problem for those landlords who, as the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, said, are not exactly in the area which the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, had in mind. At this stage I should not like to say specifically, as the noble Baroness asked me to do, how that part of the Bill will be administered; but in practice this is something that has been going on for many years. I will look into this to see whether I can say something in a more formal sense on Third Reading, because clearly this is a matter of interest.
Turning to the Amendments of my noble friend Lord Melchett (Nos. 14 and 15), one should really stress that what we have in the Bill here is only an additional ground on which the court may make an order. It must be appreciated that the new Case does not provide that the court must — and I stress the word "must" — make an order for possession in the event of there having been any ill-treatment of the landlord's furniture. Under Section 10 of the Rent Act 1968, a court (that is a county court) is not to make an order for possession of a dwelling-house let on a protected tenancy or subject to a statutory tenancy, unless the court is first of all satisfied that it is reasonable to make an Order; and, secondly, that the court is satisfied (apart from the question of alternative accommodation for the tenant) that the circumstances are as specified in any of the Cases in Part I of Schedule 3 to the Rent Act. It is not sufficient for the landlord to show that one of the Cases referred to above applies: he must also satisfy the court that it is reasonable to make the Order. Therefore, if some damage has occurred, shall we say to a particular table, that does not provide grounds.
The court would take a view as to how the tenant has occupied the tenancy and used the furniture and, as most courts do, it would take a broad view as to how the tenant has behaved. I should have thought that where a tenant has created damage, but not wilfully or extensively, there is no risk that the court would require him to leave. I would agree that preference should be given by the court to the payment of damages, as opposed to

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the removal of the person from the home, If the court were of the opinion in any case that damages would be a sufficient remedy for the landlord, it would hardly be satisfied that it was reasonable to make an order for possession. Under Section 10 of the Rent Act 1968 the court has the discretion. In my view it would be undesirable to attempt to fetter or interfere with that discretion in any particular case. I have looked at this matter and from all the evidence one sees regarding the attitude of the courts, this is a matter one could safely leave with the Administration of Justice Act.
LORD MELCHETT: I thank my noble friend for that reply. The noble Baroness, Lady Young, said that this Amendment would lead to a lot of work for people in making up inventories. That would be a good thing on the whole. As the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, said, it is common practice in any expensive letting, where there is a substantial amount of money involved in the furniture, for inventories to be made. Landlords have never complained about having to do it; they always insisted on doing it. Often landlords have not made inventories for cheap furnished lettings because if they did they would expose the fact that the furniture was not sufficient to make a furnished letting at all. They have got away with it because nobody knew what the furniture was like. That is one of the reasons why inventories have been avoided in at least one class of furnished letting. If this Amendment has the effect of making inventories much more important for everybody, it is a very good thing indeed.
The noble Baroness, Lady Young, also made the point that this is a very difficult area. I entirely agree; and it makes it all the more important, because the evidence is difficult and because there will often be conflict between landlord and tenant that the court should be obliged to look at the question of giving damages before considering evicting the tenant. The award of damages and losing one's home are two different things. It is important that the court should be obliged to look at damages first. This is a point that I would urge on my noble friend Lord Shepherd. I know that the courts already have the power to award damages and decide what is reasonable. As a non-lawyer, I have less confidence than some
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other noble Lords about how difficult it is to interpret "reasonable" in different situations. It is possible for some courts to decide that if a tenant damages furniture that is unreasonable and is sufficient grounds for eviction. Some other courts may decide that if a tenant damages furniture seriously or wilfully that is sufficiently unreasonable for them to be evicted. Other courts may take the view that if a tenant damages furniture twice, or several times, and refuses to pay damages, that is sufficient grounds for eviction.
My Amendment does not seek to fetter the courts; it could not have that effect. It seeks to make sure that the court must look at damages before considering eviction. I urge my noble friend to look at this again and take advice. This Amendment merely places the court under a minor obligation to consider damages before eviction. There has been no real objection raised to doing that, and maybe my noble friend could consider including this in a later stage of the Bill.
LORD SHEPHERD: I will certainly respond to my noble friend, particularly the part in which he suggests that there should be an obligation on the court to consider whether payment of damages should be ordered before giving an order for eviction. It may be difficult to draft that Amendment because at the end of the day one needs to be fair to the landlord. Some tenants are not all that they should be. There needs to be a limit to the number of times a landlord needs to go to the court in order to get damages paid regarding furniture that a tenant has misused on a number of occasions. But it would be wrong for me not to undertake to look at what the noble Lord has said. I will look most carefully and communicate with him.
LORD MELCHETT: I am grateful for that assurance, and I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
9.20 p.m.
BARONESS YOUNG BARONESS YOUNG moved Amendment No. 16:
Page 12, line 42, after ("dwellinghouse") insert (", any services which are provided by the landlord under the terms of the tenancy,").
The noble Baroness said: I am moving Amendment No. 16 for clarification. On

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an earlier Amendment, I raised the question of the determination of a fair rent for furnished accommodation. This is something which will prove to be much more complicated than the determination of a fair rent for unfurnished accommodation, in the field of which there is now a great deal of experience. One of the matters which must be taken into account, besides the age, character, locality and state of repair of the dwelling house, are the services that are provided in furnished accommodation. They vary enormously, and I accept there are a great many furnished flats and houses where no services at all are provided. But, on the other hand, there arc some good blocks of flats which may provide a porter and all kinds of fittings and extras that go with the flat; services of central heating, lighting; possibly laundry services, and the cleaning of flats. All these will vary with the circumstances of the tenancy. Clearly, the cost of providing these services is the kind of factor which can escalate rapidly — for example, the cost of central heating when oil prices rise. This is something of which everybody who has any kind of oil-fired central heating is only too well aware: and no doubt next winter we shall discover by how much the cost of other forms of central heating will rise.
The point of raising this question is that if these services are included in the furnished accommodation, I believe their cost ought to be reflected in the calculation of the fair rent because in these circumstances the calculation is very different from that of a furnished flat with which go none of these services. The calculation of the fair rent in that case must include whatever figure was allowed when the accommodation was unfurnished plus something for the furniture, and that is all that ought to be allowed in that particular circumstance. I hope, therefore, that the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, will be able to explain how this calculation will be made, so again to reassure those who want to let what is, after all, the better type of furnished accommodation, that they can expect a fair rent for their property. I beg to move.
9.22 p.m.
LORD AVEBURY: Obviously the factors which the noble Baroness has men-
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tioned must be taken into account to determine what the fair rent should be, either of a furnished or of an unfurnished property, because it does not necessarily follow that facilities of the kind she described are limited to furnished tenancies. For example, one can think of porterage, the lighting of common areas and the cleaning of common areas. Laundry might well be provided by the landlord even in the case of an unfurnished property. In the past we have always been told that the provision of such additional services, or indeed other circumstances that could not properly be described as "services", are covered by the phrase, "all the circumstances".
During the proceedings on the 1965 Rent Bill, I moved an Amendment in the other place which would have required rent officers to take into account the rateable value of the dwelling. I was not seeking to impose any arithmetical formula such as obtained in the case of old control, where the rent was some multiple of the rateable value, because that would have been far too rigid. Also, of course the rateable values in different parts of the country had got out of line with each other, and so that course would not have been appropriate. I simply wished to insert rateable value as one of the factors which should be taken into account in assessment of the fair rent. What I was told by the then Minister, Mr. Dick Crossman, was that obviously the rateable value of a property was included in the phrase, "all the circumstances".
Therefore, I think that if the noble Baroness seeks to put in a phrase of the kind she is proposing dealing with one aspect of the rent officer's examination in arriving at what should be a fair rent, it will be found difficult to know where to draw the line. One can go on including rateable value, and so on, until the phrasing becomes very cumbersome. Indeed, by putting in these additional phrases one can mislead the rent officers, and the rent assessment committees, because they do not know what importance Parliament attached to each one of the factors. So probably it is best if we keep the phrase or formula as simple as possible, and do not try to add in many of the factors which rent officers and rent assessment committees will already take into account automatically.
LORD HYLTON: I hope that the Amendment moved by my noble friend Lady Young will prove to be unnecessary. I always understood that where you have a fair rented dwelling you have a separate service charge to cover many of the items the noble Baroness mentioned — indeed, in addition, such things as the cost of common gardens. I hope that we do not have to agree with this Amendment.
LORD SHEPHERD: I am grateful for the intervention of the two noble Lords because they have saved me from making one of my lengthy speeches. The fact is that the Amendment is unnecessary because under Section 46(1) of the Rent Act 1968 on determining a fair rent the rent officer or rent assessment committee are to have regard, among other matters mentioned, to all the circumstances, and the words clearly include any services provided by the landlord. The matter is put beyond doubt by Section 47(1) of the Rent Act which relates to
"The amount to be registered as the rent…"
This section expressly provides that the amount so registered,
"shall include any sums payable by the tenant to the landlord for the use of furniture or for services…".
Indeed, a number of appeals to the High Court from rent assessment committees have related to the amount allowed in respect of services, and the fact that services provided by the landlord for the tenant is one of the matters to which regard must be had has never been questioned.
I hope that the noble Baroness will take not only my advice, but that also of the two noble Lords who now sit on her side of the Committee, although the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, is of another Party, that her Amendment is unnecessary. I hope that she will feel now that she can withdraw the Amendment.
BARONESS YOUNG: I realise that 1 am clearly at a disadvantage at this Committee proceedings, not having taken part in the Committee proceedings on the 1965 Rent Act, but I am grateful for the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, and the noble Lord, Lord Hylton. I put this down as a probing Amendment so that we could have on the Record the position for tenants of furnished accommodation where services are included, and
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I am glad to have it. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Schedule 1 agreed to.
Schedule 2 [Tenancies granted by resident landlords]:
9.28 p.m.
LORD AVEBURY LORD AVEBURY moved Amendment No. 17:
Page 15, line 25 at beginning insert ("Subject to subsection (1A) below").
The noble Lord said: Would it be for the convenience of the Committee if we took with this Amendment Amendment No. 22 to which Amendment No. 17 is a paving Amendment, and also Amendments Nos. 26 and 31 which deal with the same point in relation to Scotland, and perhaps also, with the permission of the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, his Amendment No. 20 which deals with substantially the same point?
We come to that Part of the Bill which is concerned with the situation of residential landlords, and I am going to argue that their total exclusion from the provisions of the Bill is a defect and would deprive substantial numbers of tenants of the protection which is given to others. This point was raised en passant on Second Reading by the noble Lord, Lord Melchett, when he spoke of the possibility that a property company might nominate somebody to move into a building, thereby becoming a residential landlord, and take the property companies' tenancies out of the ambit of the Bill. But the property companies form only a small fraction of the possible total of residential landlords with whom we are concerned. Most of them would not be able to take advantage of the procedure which the noble Lord outlined on that occasion. We arc concerned, therefore, purely with existing residential landlords and people who might become individual residential landlords between now and the time this Bill becomes law.
If one looks at the figures, one sees that the proportion of tenants who live in the same building as their landlords is twice as high in the furnished sector as in the unfurnished sector. The figure which I have been given is 27 per cent. in Greater London as a whole, and according to the Francis Report it is as high as 39 per cent. in the stress areas. If

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one looks purely at cases that come before the rent tribunal, and taking the sample of early 1969 examined by the Francis Committee, the figure rises to nearly 50 per cent. So we are not talking about a minor aspect of the Bill in discussing the position of the residential landlord.
The Government say, rightly, that they do not want to discourage the owner-occupier from letting off part of his home when he is in a position to do so, and the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, gave an example during the Second Reading debate of the owner-occupier whose family have grown up and left the home to set up on their own, and where the mother and father therefore have accommodation which is surplus to their own needs. In those cases, which I agree ought to be taken out of the restrictions imposed by this Bill, the accommodation released by the children is unlikely to be suitable for more than one other household.
The point of the Amendment to which this is a paving Amendment is that if there is only one other unit of accommodation in the house, then the landlord ought to be exempt from the protection which is given to tenants otherwise under the Bill.
The noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, went on to say that the distinction between protected and unprotected tenants, based on whether the landlord and the tenant live under the same roof, had the advantage of being readily understood by both. But equally this Amendment could be understood very easily. If there is more than one tenant in a building, then all the tenants will have the protection conferred by the Bill, as I am suggesting, hut if there is only one tenant sharing the house with the landlord. and if he has been the only tenant since the beginning of his tenancy, then he will have no protection. It is not only easy to make a statutory restriction. It is also simple to argue that this is a logical distinction. The person who becomes a landlord of furnished premises because the house has become too large for his own needs, is in a very different position from the person who acquires a property as an investment with two or more existing tenants, and is there only secondarily because there happens to be one flat in
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the building with vacant possession that he can himself occupy.
What would be the effect of the formula that I am suggesting? The Child Poverty Action Group has given us information about 23 cases where tenants were under notice to quit from a resident landlord, and in only 4 of those cases were the tenants the only household in the building apart from the landlord. In the Pimlico Neighbourhood Aid Centre, there were 2 tenants out of 22 who were the only ones in the building and a sample of the Deptford Housing Aid Centre gave 1 out of 22. I am not suggesting that these figures, based on a very small sample, represent Greater London as a whole, let alone England and Wales, but they give some indication of the number involved.
One also has to consider the sort of reasons that were given by the landlords in arguing the case for security of tenure, and the extent to which friction between tenants and landlords, which has been given as the main argument for excluding resident landlords from the provisions of the Bill, is of importance, particularly if one agrees with the Minority Report of the Francis Committee that living in your own house with another family can produce tensions and personal conflicts, and that a quick, informal and cheap remedy is needed in those cases. In fact, when one examines the reasons for landlords seeking reductions on security of tenure, in the applications that I have mentioned as ones that were dealt with by the three bodies I have mentioned — the Pimlico Neighbourhood Aid Centre, the Deptford Housing Aid Centre and the C.P.A.G.—friction between tenants and landlords appears to be quite a minor proportion of the total number of cases: of the C.P.A.G., it was 4 cases out of 23; in the Pimlico cases, 3 cases out of 22 and. I think, a similar figure in the case of Deptford.
I hope I am not going on too long. but I should like to give one or two examples of the kind of friction used by landlords in the case of the C.P.A.G.. 23 instances. In case No. 1 the landlord made unsubstantiated allegations of a moral nature against a tenant who was a deserted wife with three children. In case No. 2 relations were described as strained, but there were no specific allegations. In

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Case No. 4 the landlord alleged that the tenant slammed doors. The tribunal chairman later remarked that the landlord had previously applied for possession against another tenant for slamming doors. Case No. 6, the landlord complained that the tenant had allowed his wife's mother to stay without his consent. If one looks at these instances one might agree that they were rather trivial, the kind of things that might arise between neighbours, but which would give one no power over the neighbours if they were not tenants. The kind of behaviour which is alleged is either of a trivial character or in other cases does not seem to have been well substantiated before the tribunal. One finds that often the alleged friction is only used as an additional excuse where the real reason for the landlord wanting to get possession is that he wishes to sell for owner occupation or some other reason. It is possible to exaggerate the potential for friction between a landlord and tenant living in the same building, particularly where it is not of the kind I outlined first where the building has simply become too large for the landlord's own use and he has let off part of it. I am talking of cases where there are two or more other tenancies in the building, and I regret that we do tend to be misled by the sensational Press who love to blow up stories about landlords and tenants coming into dispute and the kind of behaviour which makes nice headlines, but which is by no means typical of the relations between landlord and tenant. One must not get the matter out of perspective. There are many thousands of landlords and tenants who live harmoniously in the same building where two or more tenancies are occupied and the landlord is also in the same building. It would be wrong for this House, or anybody else, to give the impression that landlords and tenants are in a perpetual state of warfare. Of course, one is not saying that any tenant should have absolute security and protection. Where the main reason is that the landlord has acquired a building for the purposes of investment and it is only secondly his own dwelling, as is evidenced by the fact that there are two or more dwellings let to tenants in the building with the landlord occupying only one third or less, there are strong arguments for saying that those tenants are entitled to the same protection as is given to every other
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furnished tenant in the country and we should confine the exclusion to the single tenant, who is the only other household in the building. If the Government are not prepared to go along with that, I accept, as a second best, the Amendment which is down in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Melchett and Lord Gifford. I think it is quite wrong for us to exclude the residential landlords entirely when I have illustrated to your Lordships what a substantial proportion of the total furnished accommodation they represent, particularly in the stress areas. I beg to move.
9.40 p.m.
LORD MELCHETT: I should like to support the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, in his Amendment. It covers similar ground to that in my own name and of my noble friend Lord Gifford. Frankly, I think the Amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, is a better one than ours; it is tighter and simpler, and would certainly be my first choice if the Government felt disposed (and I should be surprised if they did) to accept one or other of the Amendments.
I think the noble Lord touched on the most important point in looking at resident landlords. It should be possible to distinguish between those who buy a property as an investment and who let a substantial part of the property, if not to make money, at least to cover their costs. The Child Poverty Action Group and others, in surveys of rented accommodation where there is a resident landlord, have found many resident landlords allowing two or more households to live in their own house. In such cases, the landlords are covering the cost of rates, rent and other fixed outgoings of that sort, their mortgage repayments and so on. Many of these resident landlords are at least covering those costs, if not making a profit, and are living rent-free at the expense of their tenants. I am not objecting to that, but I think that if landlords are prepared to make money out of this sort of housing market, they should also be prepared to accept the responsibilities which go with this type of business.
We are not dealing here with people who are providing some ethereal thing, or something which people can do without one day and get the next day, or buy one week if they have enough money.

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Fundamental in people's lives is the place where they live, and the provision of housing for them. It is vital that people should, wherever possible, feel secure in where they live. The landlords anyway, resident or not, have many grounds for getting rid of tenants who are unco-operative, fail to pay the rent, or cause a nuisance. There arc already many grounds to enable landlords to get rid of bad tenants. We are trying to stop landlords moving people out because, for example, they apply for a reduction in the rent, if they are being overcharged, if they try to make the landlord look after the premises as he has a statutory obligation to do. It is important to try to get as many tenants as possible under the Control of Rent Act. This kind of Amendment will go a long way to doing that. This is a very important and very large sector, as the noble Lord. Lord Avebury, said.
It may be that up to 30 per cent. of tenants will be excluded if all resident landlords are excluded from the provisions of the Bill. I agree with the noble Lord that the instance I gave on Second Reading of property companies utilising a loophope like this is a minor point. If is very unlikely that they would do such a thing. There are difficulties that they will come across if they try it on. On the other hand, I have received at least one letter since the Second Reading debate from tenants in a building where the landlord is in the process of moving in at this moment; in other words, he is anticipating the effects of this Bill. This is a house with three tenants, and the landlord is in the process of moving in so that he can get the tenants out when the property market goes up, because he is planning to sell the house for conversion to luxury flats. So although property companies may or may not take advantage of this, some landlords, not all, undoubtedly will, and it is an extremely important area.
LORD SHEPHERD: I am sure my noble friend Lord Melchett and the noble Lord. Lord Avebury, will appreciate that my initial reaction is to resist all the Amendments that have been moved, and to do so on the basis that we do not wish to see too great a constraint being placed in a sphere which is important in the provision of accommodation. I
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see not only difficulties in principle in accepting the Amendment, but many practical difficulties in meeting the cases to which the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, has referred specifically. My noble friend Lord Melchett referred to them also. If these noble Lords will agree, I should like to read and study carefully what has been said tonight, not in any way indicating that I can move at all on the general principle, but to see whether there is any particular area where we could perhaps overcome some of the fears and expressions of dismay that we have heard this evening. I could not give any undertaking, but I should not like to say "No" to this series of Amendments, particularly in view of the persuasive way in which they have been moved. I should like to read and study what has been said and communicate with the noble Lords.
BARONESS YOUNG: If the noble Lord is going to write to the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, and the noble Lord, Lord Melchett, I wonder whether he would let me know what he has in mind. It seems to me that these Amendments are striking very much against what I always understood in this Bill to be the change in policy from drawing a distinction between "furnished" and "unfurnished" to drawing a distinction between tenancies where the landlord is resident and those where he is not, and it is the latter which will become subject to full security of tenure.
Although I quite accept (because I have seen the memorandum from the Child Poverty Action Group and the one from Shelter) that there are no doubt very bad cases where the landlord is resident—indeed there could well be some of the worst cases of all in those circumstances—there are, on the other hand, a great many people who may well buy a house and then, because it is very expensive—I am thinking again of a young married couple—decided to let part. They might, if it is a very large house decide to let off two bits of the house. This has been described as living at the expense of tenants. It may well be true that they cover quite a large part of their expenses by letting part of the property, but on the other hand they are providing accommodation for people and they are helping themselves in the process. The owner of

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the house will be incurring considerable expense, not only for the mortgage but for repairs and so on. I really cannot concede that this is in principle a bad thing to do. On the contrary, it seems to me a useful thing to do from everybody's point of view. So I think one wants to be careful, before committing oneself to amending this, that one is not once again harming a great number of people by doing so.
LORD SHEPHERD: I hope the noble Baroness has not read into words I have said a meaning that I had not intended. What I said was that I could not accept the Amendments; I did not necessarily accept the principle behind the Amendments and I certainly could not depart from the principle and intention in the legislation. What I was seeking to do was to respond to the various cases raised, to sec whether there was any area in which consideration could be given to dealing with the kind of problems that have been raised this evening. I suggest that that is part of Committee stage. I do not think any of my noble friends or the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, thought that I went any further than being willing to look at what has been said. But as I have said—and I am glad the noble Baroness has drawn attention to it—I am in no way departing from the intention within the Bill.
LORD HYLTON: I should like to ask the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, whether he would, in thinking about this problem, try to disinguish between what one might call the professional landlord and the amateur landlord without worrying too much about who is living at the expense of whom. Furthermore, in particular would he consider whether Section 7 of the 1968 Race Relations Act provides a working model for an amending clause?
LORD SHEPHERD: I will undertake to look at what the noble Lord has said to see whether there is something to be taken from it.
LORD MELCHETT: May I comment on one thing that the noble Baroness said. I hope that no noble Lord will get the impression from anything that I have said, or the Amendments, that we are suggesting that letting part of one's house to somebody else to live in is in any way a bad thing. The implication behind the
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Amendments is that if you are letting part of your house, a large part for a fairly large sum of money to two or more households, then those households should have some protection. They should not be able to be evicted from a house at the whim of a landlord. That is a bad thing. Letting the premises to people is certainly not a bad thing.
LORD AVEBURY: I hope that the noble Baroness was not suggesting that this was the first Amendment, of quite a large number that we have been looking at this afternoon and this evening, that the Minister should not examine further. I think that the noble Lord has given that undertaking to everybody else who has spoken. One must take it as not having an enormous amount of value, if one is being perfectly frank with oneself, because one knows that the point is that the Government do not want a Report stage; they want to prevent us from putting any of these Amendments to a Division. Therefore, they try to be nice to anybody moving an Amendment without giving them any undertakings.
LORD SHEPHERD: If the noble Lord says that I have undertaken to look at Amendments for the purpose of avoiding Divisions, he is being less than fair to me and to my colleagues. If I felt that one had to fight to the last ditch on an Amendment I would, but this is a Committee stage, and if there are points put that are worthy of consideration, then what is the point of a Committee unless one is willing to listen to what has been said and examine it to see whether something can be done? If the noble Lord has been aware of what I have said, on every occasion where I have had a doubt as to whether I could do anything I have always drawn the Committee's attention to it.
On an Amendment moved by the noble Baroness, she had present, I will not say the entire Conservative Party of your Lordship's House, but a large part of it. She asked me whether I would consider the Amendment and I undertook to consider it, but I made it clear that the chances of my being able to do anything were extremely remote. I hope that on reflection the noble Lord will feel that he has in fact been less than fair.
LORD DAVIES OF LEEK: I have listened—
LORD AVEBURY: I shall not finish my speech now, because I will have to withdraw the Amendment at the end. I will listen to what the noble Lord has to say first.
LORD DAVIES OF LEEK: I have been listening, too. While we want protection for the tenant, I should like to re-emphasise a point made by the noble Baroness. Take the case of young, fully qualified students who have now got married and are trying to build up a home and take a job in London, such as teachers and young medical people, and they have a little house and they put somebody in it. I hope that we are not going to look on them as flinty-hearted landlords. I hope that sometimes they will be protected from the kind of people who might batten on them, and who are much more sophisticated than they are. I know that people who have had a pied à terre somewhere feel that they ought to put somebody in it. They do not want to make money out of it, but they want an understanding that the house is kept decent. They are doing a good turn for students and others, and there should be some kind of protection for them. I think that it is absolutely necessary to give to tenants a period during which they know they are safe. At the same time, some people should also have protection when they have rooms to let and they arc living in the house themselves, and with prices as they are today are looking on those people not to exploit them for money but to help to pay for the house.
LORD AVEBURY: The noble Lord is absolutely right. Nobody can disagree With him, and that is why, under my Amendment, I have said that we should not extend the full protection given under this Bill to other landlords where there is only one other tenancy in the building.
LORD DAVIES OF LEEK: I believe that my noble friend will look at it.
LORD AVEBURY: I was not quite happy with the Minister's statement that he could not accept the principle. If what he meant by that was that he disagrees with the Lindell Evans quote that I mentioned—that is to say, where you are living in your own house with another family, it can produce tensions and per
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sonal conflict, and a quick, informal remedy is needed in these cases—and that he was going to look at it with a view to making sure that in those cases, and in those cases only, there was a quick, simple and cheap remedy, but that he was not going to extend it to the whole population of resident landlords, the large majority of whom could not be said to face that situation, I understand. When there are several other tenancies in the same block, the landlord may not even see the tenants from one week to another and it is therefore impossible for the tensions and the personal conflicts to which Lindell Evans was referring to arise.
The Minister knows as well as I do that there are many large blocks with up to a dozen tenancies in them where the landlord occupies one flat and where there is no logical reason whatsoever why he should be granted the same kind of exemption as the single owner-occupier with one tenant. That is all that we are saying, and I hope that the noble Lord, in having agreed to examine the case, contrary to the wishes of the noble Baroness, Lady Young, apparently, will look at the memorandum which has been produced by the Child Poverty Action Group—and I will be glad to let him have my copy if he has not already got one himself—and at the evidence produced by Shelter, and will come to the conclusion quite logically, and not on the basis that there is some principle which has to be upheld or prevented from being upheld.
If he approaches this from first principles and asks who should have protection and to whom it is not fair to give protection, I think he will come down on the side of my Amendment, or, at the very least, on that of the Amendment proposed by the noble Lords opposite. ff he starts by saying that there is a question of principle involved and he cannot get over that hurdle, and looks at the case on its own merit, I shall be very disappointed. But I am sure that that was not really what the noble Lord had in mind, and in view of the assurance which has been given I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
9.58 p.m.
LORD GIFFORD LORD GIFFORD moved Amendment No. 19:
Page 15, line 34, after ("his") insert ("sole or principal").
The noble Lord said: This Amendment raises a slightly different point, as to whether the residence should be the sole or principal residence of the landlord. In a sense, this is taking up an exchange which I and my noble friend Lord Garnsworthy had on Second Reading on this matter. At column 256 of Hansard of June 10, my noble friend said that it would have to be taken up as the main residence of the person occupying the flat and that he might be called upon to prove this. I rejoined that I did not think that that was expressed in the Bill, and indeed it is not. I think that there is a danger that some landlords will keep a flat or a room open in a five-storey block and will go along there at weekends or to spend a night, keeping a residence open to collect the rents and to preserve their rights under the new Section 5A.
It seems to me that, if it is the intention, as the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy has said, to make it the main residence, the Bill should say so. It does not do so at the moment. This seems to me to be a logical and necessary Amendment in order to get round that kind of residence, which may be a genuine residence in the sense that the landlord has belongings there and lives there, but would certainly not be the main or principal residence.
LORD SHEPHERD: The effect of these Amendments would be to limit the proposed application of the new Section 5A on resident landlord exemption. These sections are intended to apply where the tenancy is of a part of a "building"—a term to be modified by a Government Amendment on Report, it is hoped—part of which the landlord occupies as his residence. The concept of occupation as a residence already has significance under the Rent Act. It is occupation as a residence that creates an entitlement to a statutory tenancy. Any question whether a person genuinely occupies a dwelling as his residence can be tested in the courts. Indeed, such issues often have to be tested and there is a considerable body of case law on the subject.
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It is the Government's view that the rights of a resident landlord should be grounded on the fact of residence in the same way, and to the same degree, as the rights of tenants. This is why Section 5A is so worded. These Amendments would reduce his rights by limiting him to one residence, which is his sole or principal residence. It may be suggested that the exemption as it stands would allow landlords to hold or let parts of several properties excluding all tenants in them from protection for short periods of occupation. In the light of the extensive case law already mentioned, this is something which we can rely on the courts to prevent.
The requirement for occupation of a residence for the purpose of claiming a statutory tenancy is that there must be personal occupation as a home. I refer my noble friend to Lord Justice Clark-Hutchison in Menzies v. Mackie in 1938. Similarly, there is nothing in the Rent Restrictions Act to prevent a man from having more than one home. Here I refer my noble friend to Langford Property Company v. Trueman in 1949. Provided that there is evidence on which it can properly be said that the second one was the home and not merely a place used when convenient—and I refer to Setty v. Cohen in 1958—these are the principles which we can expect to be applied when the residence in question is that of the landlord. It can also be mentioned that the only known attempt of a three-home man to claim protection of the Acts did not succeed.
It may be suggested that the exemption as it stands will enable companies to put nominees into parts of properties in order to deny protection to tenants of other parts. This would seldom be feasible and would be unlikely. It would be feasible only when a company had a vacant or largely vacant property before sitting tenants already enjoyed protection and were unaffected by the intrusion of a resident landlord. Even then it would be inadvisable, from the company's point of view, because to enjoy the resident landlord's exemption the hypothetical nominee, besides having to be genuinely resident, would have to be endowed with the legal estate of the property sufficient to entitle him to grant sub-tenancies, with the consequence that

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the company would risk losing control of the property to its nominee.
The effect of these Amendments would thus be to deny the occupier of two homes residential rights and rights as lessor in the second. Quite apart from the fact that it may be in the second home that he has spare accommodation and he could let, the principal home is not necessarily the one that matters most to a two-home person. The principal home may be leased and the second home owned, or when the principal home depends on a place of work the second one may be the one he intends to become his only home on retirement, or his wife may spend most of her time in the second home. No reason is seen why the person who genuinely occupies more than one dwelling as his residence should on that account be denied one of those rights deriving from the occupation, when they relate to his position as tenant, any more than he should be when they relate to his position as a landlord. As I said at the beginning of this statement, it is our intention to move an Amendment on this matter and here again I will see whether I can get an Amendment to the noble Lord before it is placed on the Marshalled List.
LORD MELCHETT: Before my noble friend finishes, may I ask him one question? While accepting what he says about three-home owners and the possibility of companies putting nominees into places, is it not true to say that the effect of what he has told us is that the Bill means that the Government are supporting the rights of two-home owners as against the rights of no home owners?
10.5 p.m.
LORD SHEPHERD: No. There will be two-home owners, I suppose. Some may have one as their principal home, in the sense that it is in the district where they work, and may then purchase another place in another part of the country in anticipation of retirement. I think it would be wrong, if such a person wished to let those premises to people in need, to take such steps as would prevent him making those premises available. But on the general principle of a second home, the noble Lord will know that in the last Budget certain of the facility for obtaining a second home was removed. At this stage we should not get on to the prin
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ciples and ethics of two-home ownership, but rather should look at the Bill as it is and at the facts that present themselves to us. I hope that in view of what I have said to my noble friend, particularly the fact that we intend to move an Amendment to the earlier part of this Schedule, he will be satisfied.
LORD GIFFORD: My noble friend has delivered himself of a formidable opinion and with a salvo of cases in it which I should certainly like to study further. What I have not quite understood, though, is his reference to a further Amendment, which if I understand him rightly is a different Amendment from that which was foreshadowed earlier in the debate this afternoon and which he said was to avoid the landlord's dilemma on a fixed-term tenancy. Is this a different Amendment and, if so, can we have some indication of what it is designed to do? Or is it a secret to be unlocked at a later stage?
LORD AVEBURY: When Ministers undertake to produce an Amendment at a later stage of the Bill, they give at least some vague idea of what is to be contained in it, whereas, as I understood the noble Lord, he simply announced it in vacuo and not in relation to what is covered by this Amendment. If it is only a question of the anticipation of retirement, I thought we dealt with that point some time earlier. The noble Lord said in response to another Amendment that where a person bought a second home, looking forward to his retirement in a couple of years' time, that was a matter which might be looked at and dealt with through an Amendment to an earlier clause in the Bill.
This really worried me, listening to the noble Lord's explanation, because I thought that the question of whether a person was occupying premises as a residence was determined by other legislation, apart from the Rent Acts. Surely there is the electoral registration provisions, which are of equal importance in this matter. The test is a very simple one. The noble Lord is probably aware that a lot of people register themselves in both homes and tend to vote in the one in which they think their vote is likely to be most effective. For example, if you have a Conservative who lives in South Kensington and who has a holiday home in Newquay, then he is most likely

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to exercise his vote in Newquay, in a vain attempt to defeat my honourable friend the Member for North Cornwall, in spite of the fact that he may occupy his Newquay home for only two weeks of the year. I am afraid the noble Lord may find that, in the case of many people who own two homes, one of them is not really a residence in the normal sense of the word. It may simply be a holiday home that he visits for two weeks in the year; and although one would not want to do anything to stop him letting part of that home for the rest of the year, I do not think that this is really a sufficient ground for saying that he should be totally exempted.
The noble Lord also seemed quite certain that, because of the cases applying to tenants, a person with three homes could not claim protection by successive occupation of each of them. If one was really certain of that it would be better than leaving the question in thin air, and if the noble Lord's Amendment was designed to prevent somebody from trotting round from South Kensington to Newquay and perhaps to Liverpool as well, it would be some improvement on the present drafting. But one would like to know what the noble Lord has in mind.
LORD SHEPHERD: I hope the Committee will understand the nature of taking Bills through your Lordships' House, and the legislation at the present time. This is a Bill which I have discussed with my advisers and in the light of my discussions the note I have is that they themselves advise me that it would be their desire to see an Amendment placed in response to the Amendment which has just been moved by my noble friends. I hope the noble Lord will understand what I am saying and not press me too far on this matter this evening.
Loan GIFFORD: In breathless anticipation I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
LORD GIFFORD LORD GIFFORD moved Amendment No. 23:
Page 16, line 9, leave out ("under a contract to which Part VI of this Act applies").
The noble Lord said: I think this is another area of the Bill which will be
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affected by the other Amendment which my noble friend Lord Shepherd has promised for the Report stage. May I set out what my Amendment is designed to deal with in the hope that his Amendment when it comes will deal with the same grievance. As the Bill now stands, the landlord of a building where there are protected unfurnished tenancies, can move into a vacant flat in the building. Although he is prevented by the nature of the Act from depriving the tenants of security by the act of moving in, he can, as the Bill now stands, induce them to sign a fresh agreement. That then becomes a new contract and then the new Section 5A will bite because Section 5A looks to the commencement of the tenancy to determine whether the resident landlord exemption applies. One knows that tenants, particularly because of their natural ignorance of the intricacies of this legislation, may well be induced to sign a fresh agreement which perhaps appears to give them better rights, but in reality gives them worse. They will then be deprived as unfurnished tenants of a complete protection which they have enjoyed hitherto. I hope that my noble friend's future Amendment will take account of that possibility. I beg to move.
LORD SHEPHERD: It is the intention to introduce shortly a Government Amendment to provide that resident landlord exemption shall not apply if immediately before the tenancy is granted the tenant had occupied the premises or part of the premises under a protected tenancy. This Amendment will have the effect of ensuring that a tenant who is protected either under the 1968 Rent Act or by virtue of Clause 1 of the Bill, cannot be deprived of his protection by any action of his landlord. Unless a provision to this effect is included in the Bill, it will be possible for a landlord to move into a building, to grant a resident tenant a new contractual tenancy perhaps on the expiration of a fixed-term contract, or by persuading the tenant to accept a change in the terms of the tenancy or an increase or decrease in the amount of accommodation provided, and thus to create a tenancy to which the resident landlord exemption applies. This loophole must clearly be closed, and an undertaking is given to introduce an Amendment to this effect as soon as possible.
LORD GIFFORD: I appear to have scored a hit on that one, and I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
10.15 p.m.
LORD GIFFORD LORD GIFFORD moved Amendment No. 24:
Page 16, line 13, leave out ("comprised in the contract").
The noble Lord said: I do not know whether my run of luck is going to last, but Amendments 24 and 25 are designed to deal with a slightly different point but within the same area. Again, as drafted, this part of the Schedule prevents the resident landlord from getting round the policy of the Act by moving his tenant to slightly different premises but which include part of the same premises he occupied before. It seems to me that a much more likely means that may be devised to deprive tenants of security is not to move them to some differently constituted premises but to move them quite simply to another floor in the same building. If that is done, once again a new tenancy would come into being, and if it were the tenancy of a landlord who had just moved in and become a resident landlord, again the same thing would happen and the tenants who were previously protected would lose their protection.
I would ask that the new Amendment which is foreshadowed should also cover this point and that it should not only refer to premises which are in part the same as the previous premises but any new tenancy in the same building should also remain protected even though there is a landlord on the same premises. I beg to move.
LORD SHEPHERD: I believe this is a paving Amendment to Amendment No. 25. is it not?
LORD GIFFORD: That is so.
LORD SHEPHERD: It seems that this Amendment, if redrafted, may well represent an improvement to the Bill and tighten up the protection given to tenants. It requires a little more consideration to ensure that the proposal represents the best solution to the problem, after which a suitable Amendment could be introduced either here or in another place. With those words, I hope that the noble
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Lord will feel it right to withdraw his Amendment.
LORD HYLTON: May I ask the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, to bear in mind the legitimate interests of housing associations, if he produces an Amendment following the ones proposed?
LORD SHEPHERD: I take note of what the noble Lord has said.
LORD GIFFORD: I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Shepherd for what he has said, and 1 beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
LORD SHEPHERD LORD SHEPHERD moved Amendment No. 35:
Page 17, line 7, after second C' words insert ("or by reason of those circum stances").
The noble Lord said: This Amendment is necessary to ensure that the provisions of Section 101 of the Rent Act 1968 are accurately adapted to suit the new legislation. It is further consequential on the introduction of the resident landlord concession. Section 101 of the Rent Act 1968 deals with a case where a tenant is precluded from protection, for example, because he shares essential living accommodation, such as a kitchen, with his landlord. The section gives the tenant the benefit of provisions of Part VI of the Act—that is the furnished code.
To preserve the effect of Section 101 in the light of the new Section 5A, no protected tenancy in certain cases where a landlord's interests belong to a resident landlord, it was necessary to add to Section 101 a reference to Section 5A: and this is done by paragraph 3 of Schedule 2 to the Bill. It has been found. however, that the Amendment made in paragraph 3 of Schedule 2 would have the effect of excluding from the benefit of Part VI the case (which would be uncommon) where the tenant shares, say, a kitchen with his landlord but the landlord does not occupy as his residence another dwelling-house in the building. An example would be a case where the landlord has a pied à terre in the building that he could not say was his residence. This Amendment shows that in such a case the tenant will have the benefit of Part VI, as he does at present. I commend to the Committee a close study of

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what I have just said to see whether they need further assistance on it, and I should be happy to respond.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD SHEPHERD LORD SHEPHERD: I beg to move Amendment No. 36.
Amendment moved—
Page 17, line 43, at beginning insert ("or by reason of those circumstances").—(Lord Shepherd.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Schedule 2, as amended, agreed to.
Schedule 3 [Transitional provisions]:
On Question, Whether Schedule 3 shall stand part of the Bill?
LORD AVEBURY: The point I wish to raise may have been covered by the mysterious Amendment which the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, has promised us, but if we look at Schedule 3(1) we find that if a person is a furnished tenant before the Bill commences and, at the same time, the landlord is living in another dwelling which also forms part of the building, there is nothing in the Act which will have the effect of converting the contract into a protected tenancy. The circumstances to which I want to draw the attention of the Lord Privy Seal are those in which a landlord has read the Bill and has seen that by moving into the block in between the publication of the Bill and its coming into effect he can prevent all the tenants in that block from becoming protected tenants.
This is not a hypothetical instance. I have received a letter, as I believe one or two other noble Lords have, from a person who is a tenant in W.5. He says he has been a tenant of a furnished fiat in a house for 13 years and another tenant has been there for 10 years. But he and the other tenants have recently been given notice to quit. The landlord who has owned the house for only two years and lives somewhere else, is now proposing to move into the house and into rooms which, fortunately for him, happen to have become vacant. He will thus be able to circumvent the Bill by becoming a resident owner before the Bill becomes law. I promised this gentleman I would attempt to table an Amendment to deal with his point, which is a valid one. I have not been able to formulate an Amendment in time for this Committee
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stage, and I was intending to return to this by the Report stage. From what the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, has said already, it may be unnecessary for me to bend my mind to the process of drafting, and he will kindly do it for me. I hope that this point, as well as those of an analogous kind which we have discussed on Schedule 2, will be taken into account.
Schedule 3 agreed to.
Schedule 4 [Enactments repealed]:
10.25 p.m.
LORD GIFFORD LORD GIFFORD moved Amendment No. 38:
Page 20, line 14, at end insert—
("Section 5.
Section 33(3).")
The noble Lord said: This Amendment moves the debate into a different realm. It follows a number of references which were made on Second Reading of the Bill as to the position so far as security of tenure is concerned for tenants of council accommodation, housing trust accommodation and housing association lettings. I said in my speech on Second Reading that, by and large, such tenants enjoyed security of tenure. In practice that is the case. I am not suggesting by this Amendment that there is a very widespread misuse of power by housing departments of local authorities. However, in law it is not the case that tenants of those social landlords have any security of tenure at all. The protection given by Section 5 of the Rent Act 1968 does not apply to the tenants of local authority housing trust and housing association accommodation at all. I am wishing at this stage to take the opportunity which this Bill provides merely to ask why these tenants do not enjoy security.
There is a further object because although, as I have stated, most housing officers act with fairness and moderation towards their tenants, there have been some extremely bad cases. Some were mentioned in a report known as the Grieve Report which was produced by Shelter, which gave as the cause of homelessness in quite a number of cases the fact that people had been evicted from council accommodation having been in arrears of rent, but having offered in many cases the whole or a substantial part of the arrears before the case came

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to court. Nevertheless, the local authority persisted in its application and the court had no alternative—and has no alternative in such cases—but to make an order for possession. I see no reason at all why local authorities and housing trusts and housing associations should not be subject to the judicial control that the Rent Acts give. For instance, if there are arrears of rent the court has the power to look into the matter and make a suspended order for possession if there is a real possibility of the rent's being paid. I should not have thought that any responsible council or any responsible housing trust or housing association would wish to evict a tenant unless one of the grounds specified in the Rent Acts applied to his case, or unless, as provided in the Rent Acts, some suitable alternative accomodation was offered to him. There have been some bad cases. No doubt this is something which would have to be looked into quite thoroughly before any final decision could be taken, but I am anxious to know whether in fact there is any basic objection to this protection, as it seems to me unnecessary protection, of local authorities being brought to an end.
My speech related only to Section 5. and I hope that I may move the deletion of Section 33(3) separately. I beg to move Amendment No. 38.
10.28 p.m.
LORD SHEPHERD: I have listened with great care to what my noble friend has said. The effect of the Amendment would be to repeal Section 5 of the Rent Act 1968 and also Section 5 of the Rent (Scotland) Act 1971, which provides that a tenancy granted by a local authority or New Town Development Corporation or housing association shall not be a protected or statutory tenancy, and would thus extend security of tenure to tenants of local authorities, New Towns and housing associations. My noble friend may be aware that the Minister for Housing and Construction made the position clear on this issue during the Committee stage of the Housing Bill in another place. He said that it had been his view for some time that there should be a generality of security applied, while recognising that in practice this would mean little as regards local authorities and indeed housing associations, of whom
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only a minority acted irresponsibly; and the same is true of the New Town Corporations. He therefore agreed in principle with the view of those who had raised the matter.
In the early months of a new Government we have been fully occupied with the urgent problems with which this Bill seeks to deal, and our proposals for the repeal of the Housing Finance Act and the Housing Bill to which I have referred. We have not had time to consider how we should proceed so far as the remaining areas of unprotected tenancies are concerned, but I can assure my noble friend that the matter is very much in our minds. It would not be right for the Government to take action on this matter without full consultation with the local authority associations and the other bodies concerned, but I hope that I have indicated the attitude generally of the Government in this matter. Time is an important factor and at the moment we have not got it quite on our side. However, I hope that we can look forward to a period of office when we can continue our consultations with the authorities and perhaps meet the point which the noble Lord has in mind.
BARONESS YOUNG: Before the noble Lord concludes his remarks, I hope that lie will not undertake any alteration without the fullest consultation with local government. I think that he has given us this assurance, which I believe to be important. I agree that it appears to be completely inconsistent that local authority tenants should not have security of tenure when, as the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, has indicated, there are some local authorities which act irresponsibly. The same argument has been applied in the case of private landlords. Then it is said that if one is irresponsible everybody should have security. There appears to be a complete inconsistency of argument. However, I am quite sure that it would be wrong, on an Amendment to this Bill, to alter something because this is affecting so many local authorities up and down the country. I believe that there should be the widest possible consultation before any such step is taken.
LORD GIFFORD: I agree with both my noble friend and the noble Baroness that this is a matter upon which there should be full consultation. It is heartening to find that neither of the spokesmen

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from the two Front Benches can put forward a reason why this exemption should continue. Some soundings which I know have been taken among certain local authorities in London indicate that the local authorities themselves would be quite happy to submit to the overview of the courts in their demands for possession. However, having raised the matter and having been interested exceedingly by the comments which have been made by both Front Benches, I beg leave to withdraw that part of the Amendment which relates to Section 5.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
10.34 p.m.
LORD GIFFORD LORD GIFFORD moved Amendment No. 39:
Page 20, line 31, at end insert—
("Section 5.
Section 31(3).")
The noble Lord said: Perhaps I can conveniently speak to the last Amendment, which is to delete Section 31(3) of the Rent (Scotland) Act, and also to that part of Amendment No. 38 which deals with the deletion of Section 33(3) of the Rent Act 1968. Although the last Amendment is one of the least significant and important ones which I have had to move, it has this importance. Under the existing law, a landlord of furnished accommodation who charges his tenant more than the rent which has been registered by the rent tribunal must repay it on action taken by the tenant, and is liable to repay it up to the full length of the contract or the full length of the limitation time, which is normally six years. However, with the rents registered by the rent officer, if the landlord then charges more than the rent registered by Section 33(3) of the Rent Act the tenant can recover only the amount overpaid up to a period of two years. I fail to see the reason for the difference between the consequences of over-charging in the two different types of letting. This Bill will see a lot more tenancies brought into the rent officer's orbit and therefore the likelihood of more overcharging on the rent officer side, and it seems to me that possibly the two areas of law could be brought into line. I beg to move.
LORD SHEPHERD: My noble friend has set out the reasons for moving his Amendment. I am sure he will agree that the provision which we are dealing
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with has been firmly embedded in the rent legislation for some considerable time. This provision has been firmly embedded in rent legislation for some considerable time. The Rent and Mortgage Interest Restrictions Act 1923 prescribed a maximum period of six months for the recovery of any excess rent paid and this was extended to two years by the Increase of Rent and Mortgage (Restrictions) Act 1938. The provision was retained when the body of rent legislation was consolidated in the 1968 Act. There was, however, no comparable provision in the Furnished Houses (Rent Control) Act 1946, and therefore Part IV does not contain a similar provision. Section 76(2) allows a tenant who has paid more than the registered rent to recover the excess, without placing any restriction on the time during which he may do this.
When the limitation on the period within which a tenant may recover overpaid rent was first introduced, the maximum rent recoverable under legislation was the standard rent. The difficulties of establishing what this was in any individual case were so enormous that a landlord might in all innocence have contravened the provisions in the belief that a standard rent for the dwelling-house did not exist. It was therefore decided to limit the period of recovery. It is still difficult in many cases to establish what is the maximum recoverable rent. In these circumstances, and because I certainly have seen no evidence to show that tenants have experienced any real hardship on account of the limitation, it is thought unwise to change this long standing provision. I hope with those words the noble Lord will be willing to withdraw his Amendment.
LORD GIFFORD: I should certainly like to consider what my noble friend has said. I am bound to say that I am not here armed with evidence of substantial hardship and it may be that I shall not want to deal with the matter further. I am grateful for the noble Lord's reply and I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Schedule 4 agreed to.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, before we complete this Committee stage, I

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should like to express my very sincere appreciation to the noble Baroness, Lady Young, for having been willing to sit for very long hours, in company with others, in considering the Committee stage of the Bill. I am also particularly grateful to my two noble friends who have given a great deal of thought and care to this Bill, and I am pleased that I have been able to meet some of the points that they have made. I hope that at the Report stage we shall be able to show the benefit of their work. I should like to express considerable appreciation to all those who have helped in getting this Committee stage through today.
BARONESS YOUNG: I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, for his help to me in providing me with notes on clauses. As we have said, this is a very difficult Bill but it has certainly helped in one's understanding of it. I should also like to thank my noble friends who have supported me on the various Amendments. I am dad that at any rate the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, has agreed to look at one or two of them, and of course we shall see what turns up at the Report stage.
House resumed: Bill reported with the Amendments.

UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL BILL
Reported with Amendments.
TORQUAY MARKET BILL [H.L.]
The Chairman of Committees informed the House that the opposition to the Bill was withdrawn. The Order made on April 9 last discharged, and Bill committed to the Committee on Unopposed Bills.