Labour’s rent cap plan doesn’t go far enough
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Ed Miliband’s plan to cap private rents is welcome but does not go far enough, the Left Unity party says.
Felicity Dowling, principal speaker and housing policy convenor for Left Unity, said:
“Capping rent rises is a step in the right direction, but we need to go much further – sky-high private rents should be reduced by new legal controls. Rents should be capped at a truly affordable level. This is the policy that our recent conference voted for.
“The only long-term solution to the problem is a major housebuilding programme, to provide public housing for all with affordable rents.”
Speakers from Left Unity are available for interview. For more information contact press@leftunity.org
Notes to editors
1. Left Unity is the new party of the left in Britain. Founded in November 2013, it already has over 1,900 members and 50 branches across the country.
2. The new party is standing its first candidates in the May 2014 local elections, in Wigan, Norwich, Bolton, Exeter and Barnet in north London.
3. Ed Miliband is announcing the rent caps policy at Labour’s election launch on 1 May.
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4 responses to “Labour’s rent cap plan doesn’t go far enough”
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Yes indeed. Bring back the Fair Rents Officer. My disabled daughter who has to live in a privately owned flat pays nearly four times the rent I pay for my beautiful ‘social Housing’ flat (with garden). Taxpayers are paying to line the pockets of private landlords with our money in the form of Housing Benefit. Perhaps we should also be calling for the requisitioning of private properties held empty by overseas investors whilst our people become homeless.
Why stop there? These are timid measures which would barely distinguish Left Unity from the old parties.
Surely, if a landlord has a spare room, or, worse yet, owns more than one property, these should be put under social control or even outright social ownership. A Housing Officer should then have the power to move homeless people in, rent-free.
Many well-off people have houses with extra rooms. Even if these are not being rented out, they could be used to house the poor. Bold measures like this would solve the housing problem overnight.
And it’s pointless giving the poor free housing, if they have nothing to eat. The well-off former owners of confiscated rooms and housing stock should be made legally responsible for feeding and clothing their new social tenants, and providing for all their other needs, at the same standard at which they themselves live. Poverty cured at one stroke and the end of inequality too.
This is exactly right. Labour’s measures will achieve nothing (and witness the media outrage). This is all just a circus: a pretend set of measures that pretend to address a real injustice. At the end of the day though the fundamental inequality, that of who owns the vast majority of the land, is the one that needs to be addressed. A Fair Rent is a step in the right direction but is only that.
Niccolo Machiavelli said that a strong leader should either act decisively or do nothing. Somebody ought to read ‘The Prince’ to Ed Miliband (don’t just give it to him and hope he will read it himself, that’s never going to happen). His feeble announcement on rent control is all too typical of what we have come to expect from ‘Mr. Milibean’. It is so shot through with loopholes that tenants must be wondering just who it is supposed to benefit and it will have rapacious landlords laughing out loud. Its main proposal – that the original rent will not be increased for two years – ignores the fact that most rent agreements last only twelve months, and very many only six. After that, if the tenant is to stay on, a new contract is entered into, one which cannot be legally bound by the earlier one. Miliband’s proposal could even result in higher rents as the landlord, claiming that he cannot raise the rent for two years, will undoubtedly whack in an increased rent to begin with. Who,in God’s name, are the geniuses who research and formulate Labour Party policies.
Undoubtedly a fair rent act is needed, but the difficulty of devising and framing it should not be underestimated. Some competent person (in the Labour Party?) must be given the job and the resources to produce an satisfactorally workable document. Another job vacancy in the party would be, every time Ed Miliband is seen to be about to open his mouth, for someone to hit him with a copy of Machiavelli.