Editor’s view: Timid tenancy reform is no bad thing for now
© Puttachat/Adobe Stock We often think the role of government is to uphold criminal law and defend us militarily.
Yet one of the first roles of any functioning state is to provide a muscular defence of the contracts that individuals enter with one another and provide help to those who have suffered financial damage, not just criminal.
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This is the base upon which all commerce is built, and it is therefore one of the biggest building blocks of any society.
I was reflecting on this following publication of the government’s response to the Rock Review this week.
The relationship between landlord and tenant is one of the oldest contractual connections in the book, and frequently one of the most contentious.
For the law to be upheld it must be understandable, and for the law to be understandable it must be as simple as possible.
In seeking to balance the competing needs of landlord and tenant in this brave new world of environmental payments, it is therefore regrettable that a monumental additional chunk of complexity is being heaped upon it.
If it lands clumsily, the delicate balance between landlords’ and tenants’ competing needs will be upset and one of the sides will stand up from the see-saw and march away in a huff.
Err too much on the side of the landlord and the tenanted sector will wither away, diminishing a vital route into the industry for some of the best and brightest new entrants.
Shortening tenancies, which gives landlords greater control, has long been criticised for failing to incentivise tenants to uphold good agricultural and environmental standards.
Err too much on the side of the tenant and it becomes impossible to encourage landowners to make more of their fields and farms available.
It is beyond the reach of this column to fully discuss what is happening to the rental sector in Scotland, but the system up there is described by the Central Association of Agricultural Valuers as “in palliative care while it declines”. Not ideal.
George Eustice, despite having departed his perch at the top of Defra HQ, is still well worth listening to for his candid observations as a backbencher on life as a secretary of state.
He noted recently that civil servants move between different roles so frequently that in his nine years at Defra he often had three or four different teams for each strand of policy.
This lack of expertise can encourage timidity and, when combined with a parallel churn of politicians at the top of these departments, it means policy development is often both slow and unambitious.
Mr Eustice set up the Rock Review to, among other things, “consider ways in which we might make eligibility for some of these new [environmental] schemes conditional on a landowner demonstrating how they are working in partnership with their tenants”.
It would be easy to say this week’s developments have not done enough to modernise this partnership, especially the failure to allow tenants to diversify.
Yet on this occasion I also have sympathy with officials who have shied away from being too radical for fear of breaking the see-saw completely.
This is especially the case when the pivot for the current relationship – area payments – is being slowly tugged away.
The most important thing will be for government to stay laser-focused on the sector as the effects of that become more apparent, and continue to offer help as problems arise.
It is in no one’s interests for there to be a sharp decline in either the number of landlords or tenants.
The health of both is vital to our industry.