A section of the Labour Party’s deep hatred towards residential landlords in the UK was laid bare in a speech by Clapham & Brixton Hill MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy during the recent debate on the Renters’ Rights Bill in Parliament.
Ribeiro-Addy stood up the House of Commons and made the following statement: “I’m yet to hear a compelling reason why landlords should see their incomes grow faster than people who actually work for a living”.
For an MP this was a stunning statement to make. Let’s remind ourselves that as an MP Ribeiro-Addy receives a salary of £91,346 a year. In addition she makes expenses claims running into tens of thousands a year and will benefit from an index linked final salary pension scheme when she finally retires from her safe Labour seat. Not many landlords can match THAT as an income package.
Yet Ribeiro-Addy wants to see a “shift in the balance of power” from landlords to tenants. As she is a tenant herself what she appears to be saying is that she wants to lord it over her landlord.
Clearly she doesn’t think that landlords work for a living. As she pockets her huge salary and expenses she resents landlords increasing their income year on year and has clearly never troubled herself to find out the realities of being a landlord in the UK. She also ignores the fact that many private landlords house tenants who don’t actually work for a living. But that doesn’t matter to her, spouting ill-informed and ignorant rhetoric is one skill set she has mastered.
She won’t have considered that sustained attacks by her and her Parliamentary colleagues have resulted in there being massively fewer landlords and rental property at a time when demand for rental property is at record levels. She won’t trouble herself wondering why so few people are considering becoming landlords, one by-product of which is fewer houses being built. She won’t think that there’s any link between statements like the one she made in Parliament and why there are so many homeless people.
Yes, there are bad landlords. There are also bad tenants. Launching one-sided vitriolic verbal assaults on either group does not help anyone, especially when that attack is built on naked prejudice and grandstanding. It doesn’t help any renter to have such frankly stupid remarks made in what should be a serious debate with crucial importance for so many people.