Government is in danger of losing much-needed rental stock in their attempt to punish bad landlords
Source - Daily Telegraph 17/05/23
Frost
Michael Gove’s renting reforms are “dangerous and counterproductive”, Lord Frost has said in a broadside at the Government’s crackdown on landlords.
The Tory peer used his speech at the National Conservatism Conference to attack the Housing Secretary’s package of reforms, which will remove the right to evict tenants without having to prove any fault.
Lord Frost, who last weekend launched his bid to become an MP as he was placed on the Conservative candidate list, said it reflected a trend of growing state interference in “every activity and every choice”.
“Let’s not forget what that means. The endless hectoring, the constant suggestion that the Government has the right to dictate how you behave when it has socialised the costs. The dangerous and counterproductive intrusion into private property – as Michael Gove’s renters’ Bill will do this morning [and] the seeming determination to remove risk from every aspect of daily life," he said.
Lord Frost added that those looking to get on the housing ladder and get on in life “won't be Conservatives if we only seem concerned about looking after those who have already done well”. “We won't win elections as the party of the self-satisfied and the entitled. We must be the party of opportunity and the party of the future.”
Urging Britain to follow European countries including Germany and Hungary by “demolishing some of the monstrous buildings we built in the last 50 years and rebuilding what we have lost”, Lord Frost suggested this should be “a project for this new Carolean age”.
It came as Mr Gove faced criticism from further afield on Wednesday as the British Property Federation warned his reforms could prompt an increase in short-term lets.
Rental market 'already suffering'
Ian Fletcher, the group’s director of policy, said: “By not prescribing a minimum tenancy length the Government further risks fuelling a booming short-lets market, where holiday lets replace much-needed permanent homes, at a time when the rental market is already suffering a significant lack of supply.”
Sir John Redwood, who was the head of Margaret Thatcher’s No 10 policy unit, added: “When Parliament legislates to stop bad landlords it also needs to make sure it does not lose lots of good ones in the process.”
Marco Longhi, the Tory MP for Dudley North, said: “Landlords are leaving the market and will continue to do so unless action is taken. Removing the rights of landlords will only further encourage buy-to-let investors to abandon their properties and cause further crisis in the housing sector.
“You will see huge swathes of landlords leave the market, this has been happening for several months. The Government doesn’t realise how much it depends on private sector landlords. These properties landlords are now selling aren’t even affordable for the majority of renters, so where are these people going to go?”
Defending the plans
Mr Gove defended the planned legislation, which he said the Government hopes to get through Parliament before the end of this year.
He told the BBC: "We have landlords on our side as well because the reputation of their sector rests to a significant extent on their being able to say, as the overwhelming majority can, that they care not just for their homes but also for their tenants."
He also admitted the Government "could do better" on house building but denied that the Tories had failed young people. "Our population is growing so we do need to increase the number of homes that we’re building overall," he said. "There’s a debate about not just how many but also where. We certainly do need more homes and we need to be sensitive about where we put them."
Meanwhile, in his remarks on Wednesday, Lord Frost also shed further light on his resignation from Boris Johnson’s cabinet in December 2021 over the introduction of a range of ‘plan B’ Covid restrictions, including vaccine passports.
He said: “I found the lockdowns, actually, a profoundly inhumane and disturbing period to live through, though like many people I struggle to find the exact words to articulate why.
“But certainly part of the reason was for large parts of this period, civil society seemed to just disappear. It was just individuals, alone with the Government, and the doubtful care of our ‘world-beating’ National Health Service.”
Lord Frost admitted he was “anxious” about the current state of Britain, appearing to attack the direction of Rishi Sunak's Government.
“I can’t believe that the right way to rebuild the national cohesion of this country is through social democratic methods, through an intrusive state, through high public spending, through direct investment... We're a long way down this road already.”
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