Oral Answers to Questions

Tony Baldry Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd July 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Where I would agree with the hon. Gentleman is on the need for greater transparency in the work of letting agents in terms of fees. There is a need for alternative options, which we have put forward, for longer-term tenancies, but in the end we must allow customers to choose what they want. Where I part company with him is on the idea of introducing full-on rent controls. Every time they have been tried, wherever they have been tried in the world, they have failed. That is not just my view; it is also the view of Labour’s own shadow housing Minister, who is on the record as saying that she does not think rent controls will work in practice. Perhaps he might want to have a word with her before coming to me.

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

Q9. In the ’83 general election, a 13-year-old boy delivered leaflets around my constituency pledging that Michael Foot would take Labour out of the European Union. Does my right hon. Friend find it strange that that same boy, now leader of the Labour party, is not willing either to support the renegotiation of Britain’s terms of membership of the European Union or to pledge to trust the people of Britain in a referendum on our membership of the European Union?

[The Prime Minister]

I have always thought it terribly unfair to hold against people things they might have done in their youth. If that was the right hon. Gentleman’s idea of fun as a 14-year-old, then, obviously, we have to make room for everybody. The point is this: it is in the interests of the British people to have a renegotiation. [Interruption.] What is my idea of fun? It is not hanging out with the shadow Chancellor—that is no idea of fun. I feel sorry for the Leader of the Opposition, because he has to hang out with him all the time. What a miserable existence it must be to have sitting next to you the person who wrecked the British economy, and to have to listen to him, day after day, as he says to the British people, “We’re the people who crashed the car, give us the keys back.”