Zany proposal for rent controls is hard Labour

It is clear that a major factor in the SNP’S hold on power has been its ability to make massive in-roads into the traditional left and centre-left vote in Scotland, a vote that Scottish Labour is desperate to win back. Consequently, the two parties have been falling over themselves to come up with policy ideas that will make one lot look more like “champions of the people” than the other. Whether these policies would do any real good to “the people” is a matter for debate.

The issue of housing – always a hot potato in Scotland – is one prime example. Recently, the SNP managed to get through parliament substantial changes to the private rental market, which has substantially increased security of tenure for tenants, legislation that is considered generally detrimental to landlords. Not to be outdone, Labour has followed this up with even more radical proposals of its own.

While not in favour of the Snp-driven legislation, professionals in the rented sector have found it just about tolerable but the Labour proposals are so bizarre you wonder if older and wiser heads in the party believe they are manageable or are simply playing to their own hard-left gallery.

Part of a private member’s bill by Scottish Labour’s housing spokesman, Pauline Mcneill MSP, the proposals would bring in a point-based system to enforce “fair rents”, link rents to average wages and let tenants challenge rents they find unfair and submit rent reduction claims.

Politicians are not known for giving a healthy respect to the law of unintended consequences and anything that would “link rents to average wages” immediately flashes up warning signs. Will rents be based on the national average wage or to the job sector in which a particular tenant happens to be employed (a nightmare to administer, I would have thought)? If it’s the national average wage then logic says it will lead to a shop assistant paying more in rent and a fund manager paying less!

As for empowering tenants to chalmarket lenge rents they find unfair, this leaves me… speechless (a rare occurrence). The thought of a tenant being given the right to potentially force a landlord to reduce his or her rent is total anathema to a free market. But then this proposal is more akin to the failed Soviet Union rather than a contemporary democratic society. The next logical step would be for the state to take control of the private rented sector, no doubt having given landlords below- prices for compulsory purchase – assuming there would be any rental properties left in private hands.

Plainly, the prospect of these proposals actually becoming law would lead to a mass withdrawal of investors from the private rented sector and with it a huge reduction in stock. Now, some may welcome this because either they have a ideological hatred of private landlordism or simply want to see more current rental properties becoming available for owner-occupation. But the latter is unlikely to help low-income tenants (whom Ms Mcneill seems to be especially concerned about) because someone in this category struggling to pay a rental of, say, £650 a month, will find it even more difficult to find a 20 per cent deposit to buy the same property or even secure a mortgage for that matter.

Where I do agree whole-heartedly with Ms Mcneill is her contention that there is an insufficient level of public social housing to meet the demands of low-wage earners, forced to use the private sector where rental levels often stretch the family budget. However, the way to tackle this is a new programme of building council houses – NOT target private landlords, who cannot be held responsible for the current situation. In conclusion, it is worth remembering that this situation has been caused, largely, by the Conservative “Right to Buy” legislation. Labour, when in power, never made any real effort at repeal because it was deemed to be highly-popular with voters. Therefore Ms Mcneill and politicians of her ilk cannot have it both ways. David Alexander is MD of DJ Alexander.

Politicians are not known for respecting the law of unintended

consequences