An attempt in the House of Lords to get the roll-out of Right to Rent annulled has been defeated.

LibDem peer Baroness Hamwee said that the Government had promised that it would a light touch scheme and not introduce bureaucracy.

She said: “I do not think that that would resonate with the letting agent whom I heard interviewed on Radio 4’s You and Your” programme.

“What he said was: ‘I have become an immigration officer.’

“Indeed, he has become an immigration officer who is liable to civil penalties and who, under the current Bill, will face criminal sanctions.

”Landlords have to make reasonable inquiries as to the immigration status of all the occupants before letting a property. Well, it is not actually that easy.

“I have been through the material on the Home Office website. The user guide is 39 pages long and there are 12 hyperlinks — there may be more; I may have miscounted — plus a code of practice plus a short guide. There are 25 types of document which may show immigration status, more if there has been a name change.

“These have to be examined and copied. And not all of them are invalid if the expiry date has lapsed.

“A checking agent on the same programme said that there are 400 documents in the EU that would support the right to rent. Leaving aside unfamiliar documents, how easy is it to spot fakes?”

The lengthy debate – in which some interesting points were made about the private rented sector – is here

Meanwhile, a human rights organisation has said that Right to Rent is causing discrimination against individuals with every right to be in England, including British citizens.

It quotes two case studies.

In the first, Tony and Mary are a British couple of Chinese descent, with a close relative and her baby son – also British – staying with them.

The landlord told the couple that he could be fined if they did not provide the passport and immigration status of the baby – although Right to Rent obligations only relate to adults.

In the second case, Sarah is an Australian citizen married to a French citizen working in the UK. Sarah left her husband and looked for rental accommodation.

The agent told her they could not go ahead with the tenancy because they were not satisfied that she has the right to rent. As the wife of a French citizen, she does have that right.

An article on the Open Democracy website says that people like Tony, Mary and Sarah are the real victims of the scheme, rather than those is intends to target.

The article also queries whether illegal immigrants discovered through Right to Rent will actually leave the country.

It says: “It appears more likely that they will resort to unscrupulous landlords, therefore eliminating the underground business of exploitative landlords that the Government purports to want to deter.

“Another category of people who risk resorting to these landlords are those in limbo; those who do not have the right to rent, for example because they overstayed their visa, but who are not removable, for instance because they have a pending application to stay in the UK based on human rights grounds.

“If they are not allowed to rent, yet also non-removable, this group risks either resorting to unscrupulous landlords or applying for local authority accommodation. This will be especially true of parents of British children, which the local authorities have an obligation to accommodate.

“The scheme will, therefore, not only struggle to meet its aims, but also risks increasing the workload of local authorities, and therefore constitutes an additional burden on their limited resources.”

More here