Conservative MP for Cities of London & Westminster Nickie Aiken

• EARLIER this month Conservative MP for Cities of London & Westminster Nickie Aiken penned an article entitled “Time for Tories to protect private renters”, (The Times, May 10).

The former leader of Westminster City Council put forward two ideas to improve conditions for renters – building more housing and repealing section 21 of the Housing Act (a power that lets landlords impose no-fault evictions on tenants).

Nickie Aiken is right that renters need better protection. But her article failed to point out the obvious: The scandal of private renters being left to hang dry is the direct consequence of 11 years of Conservative government.

Three Tory prime ministers in, and conditions for tenants have only got worse, and worse… and worse still.

The price of rent has sky-rocketed while wages have stagnated, unscrupulous landlords have been given free rein to evict tenants for spurious reasons and, all the while, Conservative housing ministers have refused to introduce even the most basic protections, putting tenants’ basic health and wellbeing on the line.

It is no wonder, then, as her article points out, that “3.2 million people say they have been forced to live in dangerous or unhealthy conditions”.

If only she had completed the sentence with what would logically follow: “as a result of my party’s negligence and lack of concern for huge swathes of the population”.

Her mention of repealing section 21 is, curiously, stripped back of reference to recent political events.

Reading the article you’d be forgiven for thinking she’d just come up with the idea herself. But for years campaigners have been urging the Tories to get rid of this appalling piece of legislation.

When they could no longer ignore the issue in 2019 Conservative ministers announced that they would, finally, press ahead with repealing section 21. Two years on and still the government hasn’t fulfilled that promise.

The article in The Times failed to grasp that only radical change will give renters a fighting chance. We won’t achieve a “system less skewed in favour of landlords” by tinkering around the edges. We need bold ideas. The elephant in the room is the cost of rent.

Across London an average one-bedroom flat costs the equivalent of just shy of half gross-median pay in the capital. The solution is to look at intelligent forms of rent control.

The Mayor of London has shown leadership by convening a commission to explore how this could be done and he is now asking for powers to implement rent control measures.

But Conservative ministers are having absolutely none of it. Solution presented, solution blocked.

It is good that Nickie Aiken is waking up to the reality of a housing system which treats renters as fodder.

And we want to point out that the failure to regulate housing threatens to tarnish all landlords with the same brush; there are many who are responsible and conscientious.

But what we can’t applaud is how piecemeal her approach is. Worse still is the lack of honesty.

Political leadership is about reckoning with the public, being honest about causes, and coming up with ideas which will genuinely tackle issues at root. More of this and less PR talk from Nickie Aiken, please.

MAX SULLIVAN, IMAN LESS, PATRICK LILLEY, JESSICA TOALE, ANGELA PIDDOCK, CONCIA ALBERT, JAMES SMALL-EDWARDS, CARA SANQUEST
Members of Westminster Labour Action Team