This week in parliament we will begin the vital work of fixing the broken private rental sector in England. For too long, unscrupulous private landlords have been able to take advantage of tenants with sudden no-fault evictions, unacceptable living conditions and exorbitant rent increases.
I know because I’ve been there. I can remember vividly when I was told by a previous landlord that he was “willing to let me stay” in the flat I’d called home for five years if I agreed to a 29% rent increase with two months’ notice. If not I could clear out. At the same time, we regularly went days without hot water when the dodgy old boiler he refused to replace broke down.
Reform in this area was first promised five years and four prime ministers ago. Even Tory governments realised they had to act when the system was this broken, and the renters (reform) bill was proposed but consistently delayed. Labour’s renters’ rights bill is undergoing its second reading in parliament today. So why has it taken so long to begin fixing the private rental sector?
Aside from the constant chaos of Tory rule, the blunt truth is that there has been such fierce resistance to change because so many of our parliamentarians identified more with the dodgy landlords than they did with the tenants. In fact, in the last parliament a quarter of Tory MPs were landlords themselves.
The tearooms across parliament are no longer so dominated by private landlords. Instead, they are filled with a new wave of Labour MPs like me, sharing horror stories from our lives as renters. Many of us are from the generation that has borne the brunt of the housing crisis that was perpetuated by the last Tory government, and we’re absolutely determined that future generations won’t have to repeat our experiences.
One fellow MP recently shared a story with me about a private landlord who gave him the “option” of staying in his home under the condition that strangers would be allowed to move in so the landlord could take in more rent. The three-bedroom house that my colleague was living in was going to be stripped out, with tenants crammed into every corner that could conceivably be carved out. His only choice in the matter was to live with it or go. Ultimately, he was forced to find a new home.
But of course, the issues faced by our constituents are far worse than anything either of us has experienced. I have an inbox full of heartbreaking examples of people whose lives are being turned upside down by abuses in this broken system. During the election campaign, a mother came to me in tears and told me she was being forced to move her young family as a result of a section 21 eviction.
Not only is this damaging to those affected individually, it weighs on the future prosperity of our country, too. Every child who has their schooling damaged by an unstable home environment; every would-be entrepreneur or worker who wants to retrain but who doesn’t take the plunge because they can’t find an affordable place to live – all of them represent an opportunity lost to our economy and society.
It is also stretching local authorities’ already parlous finances. More than 1,000 children in Milton Keynes alone now live in temporary accommodation, with section 21 evictions one of the biggest causes. The cost of all this ultimately falls on the taxpayer and puts further strain on the exchequer at a time when we desperately need to be able to invest for the future.
This new bill goes a long way towards confronting these issues. It would ban no-fault evictions, ban mid-tenancy rent increases, extend responsibility on private landlords to make homes fit for purpose, give tenants the right to own a pet and create a new ombudsman to give tenants a proper avenue to pursue complaints against private landlords.
Yes, new regulation is only part of the answer. After 14 years of Tory austerity, local government and our legal system are utterly broken and we have much work to do to fix the foundations of our country. But we do so with a new generation of Labour MPs, who are aware of the problems the people in our country are facing because many of us have faced them ourselves.
Chris Curtis is the Labour MP for Milton Keynes North
