The hard left has savaged Labour’s “grossly misnamed” Renters’ Rights Act, arguing the reforms are designed to preserve landlord profits and entrench the private rented sector rather than deliver meaningful change for tenants.
Fundamentals untouched
In a critique published on the World Socialist Web Site, writer Alex Brown claims the legislation “preserves landlord profits and entrenches the dominance of the private rental sector”, delivering “only the most marginal concessions” while leaving the fundamentals untouched.
He argues the economics of renting keeps young people trapped in “lifelong dependence on wealthy landlords who extract rent as a permanent levy on wages.”
Labour’s timeline for tightening standards in the private rented sector, Brown claims, exposes political priorities. “These delays are not technical failings but political choices.”
Landlords enriched
He adds, “Labour is protecting the system that ensures public funds to subsidise private landlords, while landlord incomes and asset values soar.”
Brown also argues the post-Section 21 framework strengthens landlord power, warning the new model creates “a faster, more automatic system that strengthens landlord power and broadens their ability to remove tenants.”
In addition, he describes the right to challenge rent rises through the tribunal system as “largely illusory”. He says Labour’s attempts to improve accountability will be “toothless for the most vulnerable tenants.”
Universal credit is a gigantic public subsidy to landlords.”
He also claims changes to re-letting timelines “incentivises the cynical eviction of tenants under the pretence of selling”, allowing homes to be re-let at “significantly higher” rents.
Welfare support is another target, with Brown describing Housing Benefit and the housing element of Universal Credit as “a gigantic public subsidy to landlords”, accusing it of transferring “£13–14 billion annually from the welfare system into private hands.”
He concludes: “This is not a system that can be fixed through regulatory tweaks.”
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