I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require certain persons or organisations to share specified data relating to the short-term letting of accommodation with regulatory authorities; to amend the Data Protection Act 2018 in connection with that requirement; and for connected purposes.

I am honoured to represent the Cities of London and Westminster in the heart of London; it is a truly unique constituency in a number of ways. How many can say that they have the Tate Britain, Ronnie Scott’s and Abbey Road Studios in their patch? How many can boast 78,000 businesses and 2 million jobs? How many can point to having been the home for a unique wealth of historical figures, such as Mary Seacole, Millicent Fawcett and Olaudah Equiano? However, this centrality comes at the cost of one of the most competitive housing markets in the world, where long-term residents are forced to compete against commercial real estate, luxury developers and foreign oligarchs.

Chief among the forces hollowing out our communities is the unchecked proliferation of short-term letting hosts on Airbnb, Booking.com and other sites. These individuals turn our homes into hotels, our communities into commodities, and our neighbours into night-time nuisances. My inbox is full of such stories: fire services being called because of guests leaving cookers on; families with children being kept up with drug-fuelled James Bond-themed parties taking place right next door night after night; and even organised crime outfits renting out apartments for a weekend to harass Londoners, snatching phones and wallets before leaving with their ill-gotten gains.

Amidst this bad behaviour is the flagrant breach of the London-wide regulation that short lets can operate for no more than 90 nights per year without planning permission. This is operationally impossible to enforce because of how difficult it is to get accurate information on how many nights a short-term let is being used. In some parts of my constituency, as many as 30% of homes are being used as short-term lets, in the process making the homes that are left less affordable for long-term residents. Research from King’s College London shows that doubling the density of short-term lets is associated with an 8% growth—or more than £4,500 per year—in per-bedroom rental prices. This overheated housing market has become unaffordable for locals and hollowed out communities like those in the west end, which was historically the beating cultural heart of London, home to William Blake, Shelley and Constable. The average one-bed flat in Soho costs £2,400 a month to rent privately, That is over double what it would have cost at the turn of the millennium. At the same time, average prices have tripled from £300,000 to nearly £1 million.

When non-residential forces crowd into a residential market, it is working people who are the losers. It is no coincidence that Soho’s population has shrunk by two thirds over the same time period and that the knock-on effects of these changes are felt. Since my election, Column 783is located here

I have had to fight for institutions used by local residents, including schools and community facilities such as the Jubilee Hall gym and the Central YMCA, to stay open, and frequently their landlords have complained about a lack of footfall.

London is not just special because of its landmarks or its economy; it is special because of its people—its historic communities living and working together, and generating some of the greatest cultural and social achievements produced by this country. If we want to keep London a world-leading city, we need to ensure that its people can afford to make a home here, and that they feel safe and at ease living here. We have to fight for this city, and that is exactly what I intend to do.

I would like to take a moment to pay tribute to the City of Westminster’s pioneering short-term lets team, who work day in and day out to enforce existing rules around illegal subletting, the 90-day rule, and antisocial behaviour in problem properties. Since coming into power on the council in 2022, Labour has doubled its size and I have been working with it in launching a short-term lets commission, directly reporting properties flagged by my constituents to council officers and ensuring they are taken off the sites for good.

The Government are on the side of my constituents too, pushing forward with a mandatory short-term lets registration scheme. This will for the first time give us clear, uncontested data on where the short-term lets are and who is operating them. Hosts will have to enter their property’s address and will receive a unique reference number, which will then appear on all sites where it is let, and they will have to confirm that they are following existing regulations that apply to short-term lets, such as fire, gas and electrical certificates. This will be transformative for how we enforce short-term lets in London. With a unique reference number, teams like those in Westminster will be able to pinpoint problem properties much more easily and take them off major sites for good.

But there is a piece of information that the scheme must collect, yet which right now we cannot: the number of nights for which homes are being let out. Without this crucial data, enforcing the 90-day limit will remain an elusive task to local authority planning enforcement teams. Data from AirDNA indicates that nearly 6,000 short lets in the Cities of London and Westminster are being let out for over the 90-day limit. These are almost certainly the worst offenders when it comes to the other community disruptions I have mentioned. If we simply made these actors follow the law, or better still took them off the market entirely, we would significantly reduce the disruption caused by short-term letting.

Why can we not record this data? The Data Protection Act 2018 currently prevents such information from being shared. While the Act is crucial for ensuring that our personal data is more secure than in comparable countries outside the EU, in this case it stands in the way of effectively regulating short-term lets. A number of exemptions exist in the legislation, however, and the Bill would extend them to include the number of nights for which short-term lets are used.

However, that is not the only action needed to tackle short-term lets. Time and again, my constituents bring up licensing as a possible solution to the spread of short-term lets, backed by reams of research from policy experts. Just as a business must apply to open a bar or Column 784is located here

café in a local area, so too should the host of a short-term let have to apply to their local authority before opening what is, in essence, a micro-hotel in the middle of a residential block.

While every local authority should be able to undertake its open approach to this issue, local authorities such as Westminster and the City of London, where concentrations are so high, need to have the power to decide where homes can be let out and under what conditions. The Government’s upcoming database is a crucial step in this direction because it can, for the first time ever, provide an authoritative dataset on the extent of this problem, which will benefit Members of Parliament and their constituents across the country.

My constituents are ready to engage with that database and report poor practice, and the local authorities I work with are on hand to upscale their work and the benefits that it can bring. All we need now is this final piece of the puzzle: knowing how many nights homes are let out for. That piece is well within our grasp, and it is up to us in this House to deliver it.

Question put and agreed to.

Ordered,

That Rachel Blake, Lizzi Collinge, Florence Eshalomi, Dame Meg Hillier, Alison Hume, Jayne Kirkham, Joe Powell, Anna Gelderd, Will Stone, Noah Law, Tony Vaughan and Dr Scott Arthur present the Bill.

Rachel Blake accordingly presented the Bill.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 27 February, and to be printed (Bill 382).

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I would be grateful for your advice on how I register my utter disgust at the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Rachel Blake) scoring a cheap political point about me visiting a synagogue in this constituency.

First, that is not a point of order, but the hon. Gentleman has put it on the record. A point of order was made earlier, and this ruling is where I stand: if you are visiting a synagogue for prayer or in a private capacity, the relevant Member should not expect to be told. However, if you are visiting in an official capacity following an invite, it is only right that we must ensure that the relevant Member of Parliament is aware. I will leave it at that. I will not continue the debate, but I just reaffirm to all Members—whether shadow Ministers, Ministers or Back Benchers—that they should ensure that the relevant Member of Parliament is aware of a visit. When I say “visit”, I am talking about one made not in a private capacity but a political capacity.

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I raised a previous point of order regarding the Royal Mail and postal delivery services, and I mention that because I recently wrote to some constituents about that very point of order. However, that letter, which was sent first class from the House of Commons, took 12 days to arrive. Many Members across this House are writing about important issues on House of Commons paper, in House of Commons envelopes, and they are taking many days to arrive. As a result, many of our constituents might be ill-informed about the speed with which Members of Parliament are Column 785is located here

responding, which—as you will know, Mr Speaker—can be raised with the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards—

Order. That is certainly not a point of order, but you have rightly put your point on the record. I am sure your constituents are well aware that you are diligent in your replies, and that the delay is down to Royal Mail hanging on to your letter for 12 days. Royal Mail quite rightly has a duty of care. If it says first class, we expect a first-class delivery service. With the price of postage, the Royal Mail should be embarrassed by what you have raised today, but that still does not make it a point of order.