An Early Days Motion tabled by Green Party MP Caroline Lucas has called on the UK government to establish a national system of rent controls to address the increasingly huge costs of renting in England.
Eight MPs have signed the motion so far which calls on the government to set up a Living Rent Commission, tasked with consultation on and designing a national rent control system with local flexibility and to provide powers to local councils to control rents in high rent areas.
The motion highlights how tenants in private accommodation in England are forced to pay out more for housing than our European counterparts where rights for renters are stronger, and therefore urges the UK government to follow suit and provide better protection for private renters.
It comes as rents in the UK are rising at the highest rate in decades, increasing by 9.2% in the 12 months to March 2024 according to the ONS, highlighting the ongoing affordability crisis.
AS BELEAGUERED customers faced further price hikes today, the scale of Britain’s energy rip-off was revealed.
The energy firms have collectively reaped profits of £420 billion since 2020, according to research by the End Fuel Poverty Coalition.
For comparison, the annual budget of the Department of Health & Social Care, which includes the NHS, was £181.7bn in 2022-3.
Though the Ofgem-imposed price cap, limiting what customers pay for each unit of gas and electricity that we use, fell today to £1,690 a year for a typical household, the average standing charge rose from £303 a year to £334.
These charges, which have to be paid even if no gas or electricity is used, have risen by 147 per cent since the 2022 outbreak of war in Ukraine.
Those cashing in on the profits dividend include not only the energy providers but also the firms that own the wires and pipes through which electricity and gas supplies travel, all publicly owned prior to privatisation in 1990.
A preschool age child playing with plastic building blocks, January 24, 2016
CHILD poverty hit a record high as only the top earners were better off last year, official figures revealed today.
Campaigners said youngsters were being forgotten as the statistics showed food insecurity soared by 53 per cent, 100,000 more working households fell below the poverty line and more pensioners were unable to afford basic goods such as food and heating.
The Department for Work and Pensions estimated 4.33 million children in households in relative low income – below 60 per cent of median income after housing costs — in the year to March 2023.
This is up from 4.22 million the previous year and the highest since comparable records for Britain began in 2002/03.
Gravestones in Victoria Tower Gardens, London, during a Greenpeace demonstration, March 13, 2024
FUEL poverty campaigners created a mock cemetery outside Parliament today to mark the deaths of tens of thousands of people who have died from cold-related illnesses since the government cut grants to help insulate homes.
Hundreds of headstones, made with insulation panels used to help people keep their homes warm, were erected in a royal park by Greenpeace and the Fuel Poverty Action campaign.
Greenpeace said that 70,000 people — on average 58 a day — have died from cold-related illnesses since the government slashed subsidies for loft and wall insulation in 2013.
Greenpeace UK fuel poverty campaigner Paul Morozzo said: “Thousands of people are literally freezing to death in their own homes during winter.
“And not only have successive governments failed to prevent this needless and shocking loss of life but they have fuelled this silent public health crisis by slashing insulation funding and failing to deliver a proper scheme to upgrade our cold, damp, draughty homes.”
Keir Starmer sucking up to the rich and powerful at World Economic Forum, Davos.
Beyond each Labour U-turn is a well of suffering and poverty that has no justifiable reason to exist, says trade union case worker Kasmira Kincaid
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Our politicians invariably speak of “fiscal responsibility”; of “balancing the budget” and “living within our means”. The Keir Starmer of today – as opposed to the Keir Starmer who was elected to lead the Labour Party in 2020 – is no different. But these words just serve to obscure the obscenity of what is actually being said: that we can’t afford to feed the poor, to house the homeless, and to allow people to live in dignity and comfort.
But the thing is we can. We know we can. We know it when we see government funds used to drop bombs on foreign countries. We know it when we see sweeping tax cuts to the wealthy, and tax evaders let off the hook. And we know it when we walk past empty tower blocks, full of investment properties, while homeless people die on the streets.
It’s a supreme form of gaslighting to suggest otherwise, asking us to deny the evidence of our senses and experiences. Making sure everyone gets what they need is a logistical challenge, for sure. But there is enough to make sure everyone gets what they need.
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As a new Labour government comes to feel inevitable, many of us are taking stock of what such a government would mean. Over the last four years, Keir Starmer has U-turned on practically every anti-austerity policy in his 2020 leadership bid: from abolishing universal credit and what he once called “the Tories’ cruel sanctions regime”; to scrapping work capability assessments and the two-child limit on benefits; to re-nationalising key public services.
Today I live a life where few of these policies would directly affect me. Yet I haven’t forgotten what it felt like to be in the firing line for government decisions. The material conditions of people’s lives should be the beginning and end of politics. As we voice our opposition to continued austerity we’d do well to remember that. To remember that beyond each of these U-turns is a well of human suffering that has no justifiable reason to exist.
Kasmira Kincaid is a trade union case worker and former benefits claimant.
