'Half-baked and doomed:' the Labour housing policy hailed by the Greens

DJ Liz Kershaw told Emma Reynolds she was fed up of landlords like herself being 'stigmatised'

(Ben Pruchnie | Getty Images)

Labour's plans to introduce rent controls in the housing market were described to the party's housing spokesman live on Sky News as "half-baked and doomed".

BBC Radio 6 Music DJ Liz Kershaw told Labour’s Emma Reynolds that she was fed up of landlords like herself being “stigmatised” and predicted the policy to impose fixed-priced rents with increases limited to inflation would lead to homes being left empty.

Labour’s policy is a direct pitch to Green voters, with party leader Natalie Bennett admitting she was “delighted” Ed Miliband had announced plans to cap rents in line with inflation, but insisted it was a “watered down” version of the Green party’s policy to link a cap on annual rent increases to the consumer price index.

Clashing on Sky News, the DJ told Ms Reynolds: "I think this is half-baked and doomed, if there is a sense that rents are going to be very rigidly controlled.

"What will happen is that properties will become vacant. If interest rates on mortgages go up, what about the landlords buying with a mortgage? Their monthly payments sky-rocket - and there's no control on that, because the Bank of England decides that - and your rent is frozen for three years.

"All you are going to do is drive people out of being landlords. I'm sick of us being stigmatised. There are bad landlords, but there are also really bad tenants.

"Landlords are providing a vital service in the private sector. Successive governments since Margaret Thatcher's Right to Buy scheme have sold off all our public stock, and they have been filling that hole."

But Labour's Emma Reynolds insisted the party was not going back to 1970s-style rents fixed by the state, but wanted to give private tenants security by insisting rents rise by no more than inflation during the course of a three-year contract.

Ms Reynolds responded: "We are not proposing '70s rent controls, in which the state decided the level of rent. The market will determine the rent, there will be a negotiation between the landlord and the tenant at the start of the tenancy, but we are introducing three-year tenancies and, during that time, rent increases will be limited to inflation. That doesn't exist at the moment - landlords at the moment can hike up rents from one year to the next.

"We are not stigmatising landlords. There are some really good landlords out there. We are simply saying we have a very short-term and unstable and insecure private rented sector. We are simply saying that tenants deserve more security and peace of mind and an ability to plan for their family finances for that three-year period."