Private Rented Sector

Karen Buck Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I am delighted that we are having this debate, and very sad that it is so short, meaning that so many colleagues can speak only for a short time.

This is an enormous issue. As I pointed out in my intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), a third of my constituents now live in private rented accommodation. I keep a tally at my advice bureau every week of the highest rent I have come across in comparison with the rent that would have been paid if the house had remained a council property. Last week, I came across the following example. Flat A was a council tenancy, had been fully refurbished to the decent homes standard and was £100 a week. The tenancy was secure, the family was happy—so was everybody—and the children were doing well. The flat next door was £440 a week and repairs were not done. The ex-council tenant lives in Southend or wherever else and can apparently live comfortably off the income from one flat bought under right to buy. What is going on in the rented housing sector is disgusting and obscene.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Unfortunately, I will not give way to anyone as it will prevent others from speaking. We need an understanding of the urgency of regulation of the private rented sector to ensure that those people who go into it as tenants can be assured of getting their deposit back, which they often do not, of not being charged excessive search fees by the agencies, of not being harassed out of the property, and of its being maintained. Local authorities have some powers in that regard but we need far more powers for them to intervene and ensure that conditions are decent.

The experience in my constituency and that of my neighbour, my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson), is that there is a large amount of funny money going into London. People are buying up large quantities of property, mainly in west London, and that has a knock-on effect on the whole private sector across London, leading to excessive rent rises. My constituents cannot afford to remain living in the area where their children go to school, or where they work, and they cannot afford to stay there if members of their family are unemployed but have caring duties relating to the wider family, so there is enormous population turnover. Having short-term tenancies with very high rents corrodes community and family life, and is fundamentally very damaging for all of us in the long run.

The local authority faces huge housing demands; it has 13,000 families on the priority list, and the council cannot possibly house them in its housing stock of 30,000 homes, so it has to house them in the private sector. On some occasions, there is a rent deposit scheme, but that is quite rare. On most occasions, the council is forced to house people in the private sector, wherever it can find homes. Very few people are rehoused in the borough; the local authority’s responsibilities are discharged all across London. Some London boroughs discharge those responsibilities to places well outside London.

Unless we build more council houses, regulate the private sector and guarantee that all our children will have somewhere decent, safe and warm to live, study and grow up, we pay the price—in ill health, in under-achievement in schools, in family break-up, and in crime. It is up to us to do something about that. We should start with regulation, because there will always be some private sector involvement, but we should then move on, particularly through investment in council housing, which will help us to solve this problem.