In an attempt to water-down the Renters’ Rights Bill, the House of Lords added a number of amendments to it.
This included Amendment 11, which would have forced any new tenant with a pet to pay a ‘Pet Damage Deposit’ to the landlord, equivalent to three weeks rent.
When the Bill returned to the House of Commons on 8 September, for MPs to consider the Lords’ amendments, I joined with my Labour Colleagues to remove amendments 11, 14, 18, 19, 26, 27, 39, 53, 55, 62, 64 and 67 from the Bill.
Unsurprisingly, Conservative and Reform MPs voted to keep every one of these anti-renter amendments in the Bill, however, the Labour majority in the House of Commons ensured that we could remove them.
The Bill will now return to the House of Lords where there will no doubt be fresh attempts to amend and water it down.
I don’t know how long we will need to go to back and forth with the Lords for, but I can assure you that I will never accept the watering down of this vital, long-overdue legislation, which seeks to redress the power imbalance between renters and landlords.