Jacob Rees-Mogg has said the Government’s plans on landlords’ rights will constrict supply and lead to increased rents.
Speaking on GB News he said: “Reports suggest the government plans to restrict landlords to raising rents just once a year, and then to its definition of a market rate.
“Gone will be the days of in-tenancy rent increases written into contracts, a move expected to take effect by next summer.
“Also on the table is a ban on rental bidding wars and stricter rules requiring landlords to publish a set asking rent.
“The question this raises is, will these socialist interventionist reforms bring much needed relief for tenants or will they drive landlords away from the market and thus damage the already squeezed rental market?
“It seems to me that these reforms that were Michael Gove’s reforms initially, are a missed place policy that fails to recognise that we're simply not building enough houses and that most of these problems would evaporate if we dealt with the fundamental underlying housing shortage.
“I think [high and increasing rents] is the dysfunction of the overall market rather than the dysfunction of the private rented sector.
“That is that most people who want to set down roots would actually like to be buying property, and they're not able to do so because prices are too high, because supply has been so heavily constrained.
“And that the private rented sector is actually meant to be for a short term, to help facilitate mobility.
“If you want to maximise the number of properties in the private rented sector…we want to maximise that. We want to make a flexible market so that people enter it.
“We do now see that landlords are leaving the market, which constrains supply and actually puts up rents.”
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