Absolutely. You are quite right. Technically, 12 are mandatory and four have some element of reasonableness, but the reasonableness requirement is incredibly focused and narrow. In relation to home owners or tenants in the social rented sector in Scotland, the Parliament introduced a fantastic reasonableness test that requires the court to look at a number of different factors, such as the history, the person’s circumstances and the impact of the repossession or eviction on other occupiers of the house, such as children and disabled persons. However, in the bill, there is a very narrow view of what is reasonable in terms of the facts. That is why we say that there is very little room for manoeuvre.
Ultimately, although I wholly accept that the Scottish Government has said that it will remove the no-fault ground, the problem is that so many mandatory grounds have been created that that effectively supersedes the Government’s good intentions.
I will give one brief example. As I said, in our experience, there are two sectors in the private rented sector. There is the nice sector, in which people have lots of money and choice, and the sector for everybody else—for people who do not have lots of money and who have no choice. In our experience, landlords in the latter sector often just ignore the law. They break the law and do whatever is required to get their property back.
Under ground 1 in the bill, all that a landlord will need to say is, “I intend to sell my house in the future.” They will then be able to evict, and that will be that. What is interesting about that ground is that it undermines the Leases Act 1449, which is the second-oldest act of the Scottish Parliament in existence. Believe it or not, that is still good law in Scotland. It was passed because farmers who grew crops had rich landowners who sold the land to their mates, who would then inherit the crops. It has always been the case that a person who sells a tenanted property in Scotland sells it with a sitting tenant. In one fell swoop, the bill would put that act out of the window.