Awaab Ishak was just two years old when he died from respiratory failure in December 2020. Two years later a coroner concluded that Awaab’s tragic death was the result of black mould riddled throughout the Rochdale social housing flat where he lived. After the verdict, and a campaign by his parents with the Manchester Evening News and housing charity Shelter, the then Conservative government passed what came to be known as Awaab’s law. The legislation, introduced in July last year, created a new legal framework that will require social housing landlords to adhere to strict time limits to address dangerous hazards like damp and mould.
This year’s Labour party manifesto committed to expanding the scope of Awaab’s law to include all landlords. It was upon this manifesto that Jas Athwal, now MP for Ilford South and former leader of Redbridge council, stood. In his previous position at the council he introduced a licensing scheme for landlords. In 2018 he tweeted: “Rogue landlords, we are coming for you”. Upon his election in July, Athwal became the biggest landlord in parliament – boasting an empire of 15 residential properties in London, a further property in Bedfordshire and three commercial properties.
But a BBC investigation has now found that some of his flats are infested with ants and riddled with black mould. Tenants claim they have repeatedly reported the issues to the management company, with some tenants told to move somewhere else if they weren’t happy. None of the properties had the licences required by the scheme that Athwal himself brought in. For his part, Athwal released a statement on Sunday morning stating that he was “shocked” by the findings of the investigation and had been “unaware” of the state of the properties and the fact the licences were out of date. He has now said that he will pay for the repair of the properties.
It is, of course, rank hypocrisy for a man who claims to be a “renters champion” to not know about the living conditions of his properties. In his statement, Athwal claimed the “buck stops with me” – before promptly stating that he had fired the management company (which sounds a lot like passing the blame). Athwal’s properties are not social housing and he is not in contravention of Awaab’s law – but his position as a member of parliament for Ilford South is still completely untenable. This deeply troubling scandal, however, spreads much further than one MP – and inevitably leads to wider questions about whether it is appropriate for members of parliament to be landlords at all.
In his pitch to the country earlier this year, Keir Starmer committed to cleaning up politics – to end the era of sleaze under the Conservatives that had seen the party judder from scandal to scandal as it floundered around in the dying years of its tenure. A much watered-down version of the previous Labour pledge to ban all second jobs for MPs was announced just weeks into the Starmer government.
The plans – which would see MPs banned from second jobs that “fail to put constituents first” – were introduced by leader of the Commons, Lucy Powell. Powell is a landlord who draws over £10,000 of income a year from renting out a room in her London flat, according to the register of interests, and is one of 85 MPs who earn over £10,000 annually as a landlord (and thus must declare it). I hope that the “job” of being a landlord would be included in this new legislation, but I won’t hold my breath: 44 of the parliamentary Labour party are landlords, including the foreign secretary, David Lammy.
It is quite clear that there is a conflict of interest in MPs earning money as landlords. A member of parliament is supposed to be there to advocate for their constituents. But when your landlord is refusing to fix the mould in your home – but that landlord is also your MP – who are constituents meant to turn to for help? More broadly, how can we trust that those with a financial interest in maintaining the broken status quo – with landlords’ rights massively outweighing those of tenants – will fix our broken rental system? It was well documented that the 2019 Conservative election promise to end so called no-fault evictions fell foul of repeated lobbying by landlords inside and out of parliament.
The average rent in London is £2,098 a month. It is far from uncommon to see a room in a shared flat up for rent for £1,000 or more, while rents in some towns and cities like Reading and Coventry are growing at nearly 20% annually. As renters, our homes are often mouldy and damp. They’re falling apart around us, and many of us feel completely unable to raise this with our landlords for fear of rent raises or eviction. To its credit, Labour has committed to trying to redress the imbalance in our broken rental system through ending no-fault evictions and extending Awaab’s law (alongside vague promises about building more homes to increase affordability). But I will only know Starmer is serious about these issues when he does two things: ban landlords in parliament and remove the whip from Jas Athwal.
Ben Smoke is a commissioning editor at Huck
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