Letters: Housing supply and the key to rent control

These letters appear in the 28th April issue of The Independent

David Cameron would be unwise to take your advice (editorial, 27 April) and accuse Labour of “playing the generations against one another” over Ed Miliband’s promise to cap private-sector rents for three years in line with inflation.

I know of no reason to suppose that older voters will be so self-seeking as to resent Labour’s overtures to younger voters. As one who has to admit, reluctantly, that he falls into the former category, I would be absolutely delighted if rents were controlled, even though I’m not a renter.

Mr Miliband should now push home his advantage by talking about how, under such a policy, less taxpayer money would be shovelled into landlords’ pockets because of the consequent reduction in the subsidising of rents through housing benefit payments.

Patrick O’Brien

Aberystwyth

In the 1950s I was training to be a chartered surveyor. The firm I worked for managed a few small portfolios of rented properties, so I have experience of rent-control legislation, which was well meaning but disastrous for the rented housing market. One of my tasks each week was to collect these rents.

One of our clients, who owned four or five small houses, was an elderly bachelor. Once a quarter, we accounted to him for the financial results of the investment which he had made to provide for his old age, after a lifetime of hard work. I well remember that, on many occasions, the result of the quarterly account was that he owed us money to cover the cost of maintenance and repairs, rates and other charges, and our fees. On other occasions the amount that he received was a pittance and the result was that this particular landlord could not afford to buy a house to live in, could not get possession of any of the houses that he owned, and therefore had to live in a caravan.

This situation was typical of the post-war period and was the result of the rent restriction acts passed in the 1930s, which meant that the rented housing market disappeared, and did not re-emerge for around 30 or 40 years.

Now the Labour Party says it is going to reintroduce rent control. The long-term result would again be the drastic reduction in size of the private rented housing market. The solution to the high costs in the market is the same as in the owner-occupied market, and that is to increase the supply of houses. Only when the planning system is radically reformed so that “nimbyism” can no longer strangle the supply of housing will our housing supply problem be solved.

John Charman

Birchington, Kent

Labour’s proposal to help first-time buyers by removing stamp duty from their first purchase, like the Government’s help-to-buy scheme and all such giveaway gimmicks, is, except in the very short term, doomed to failure.

All these ideas ignore economic principles. The cost of anything is set by the balance between supply and demand. If demand increases, and it is not possible to increase supply, the price will rise to choke off demand until they are in balance again.

By removing the stamp duty, affordability will be temporarily increased, thus increasing demand. Increasing supply to any great extent is not possible on a relevant time scale. So house prices will inevitably rise until supply and demand are in balance again.

All such schemes do is further enrich those who already own property. The only solution is to increase supply.

Tony Somers

London SW5

The blame for deaths in the Mediterranean

I had always respected Ed Miliband as a man of principle, despite his political views. His despicable comments implying that David Cameron is responsible for migrant deaths in the Mediterranean now make me see him as a man so desperate to be Prime Minister that he is prepared to make statements that show he is unfit for any political office.

Mike Park

London SE9

Has Ed Miliband broken a gentleman’s agreement to not mention the war? Sorry, the “no-fly zone”.

Nothing could be more blindingly obvious than the connection between the continuous pounding of Libya over seven months in 2011, and the boats sinking off Libya’s shores. Some of the militias that the RAF bombed into power are running a lucrative business sending thousands of refugees, unimpeded by any forces or institutions of a state. Others have turned to slaughtering Christians.

David Cameron’s response has been mind-boggling: shameless and shameful. Miliband is little better: he voted for the brutal bombardment of Libya and forcible regime-change, and now quibbles about how little was done to pick up the pieces.

Peter McKenna

Liverpool

I am a UK taxpayer and very happy to imagine my money being spent in the following ways: firstly in funding an operation to rescue all migrants whose lives are in jeopardy, people who have often endured torture and violence in their own countries and who have had to undertake gruelling journeys to get as far as Turkey, Egypt or Libya.

I have met people who arrived here by this route, a traumatic experience on top of what has already been suffered. I would even suggest that ferries should be used, in order to starve the smugglers of business.

Second, I am certain that all those who flee must be able to go through a transparent, just and legally aided asylum process in Europe, so cannot be turned back at borders without having this opportunity. It would make me feel proud of the European Union.

Jackie Fearnley

Goathland, North Yorkshire

To David Cameron’s “British values” we can reasonably add mean-spiritedness and hypocrisy: accepting around 100 Syrian refugees, compared with Germany’s and Sweden’s 40,000, and the refusal to take in any of the refugees fleeing across the Mediterranean from Libya.

We are culturally and politically a deeply divided country, which even this joyless and dissembling election cannot conceal. Speaking for myself, British born and bred, I have more in common with an Albanian sheep farmer than with Cameron and his like.

John Tilbury

Deal, Kent

When candidates have to face the voters

I disagree with your secret election candidate when he says: “I am not convinced hustings persuade anyone” (The Secret Diary of a Candidate, 25 April). Research in 1994 by John Braggins, a successful Labour campaigns manager, showed that the one thing that can change people’s voting intentions is meeting the candidates.

Voters have a nose for whether the candidate has conviction or is just repeating the mantra of his or her party’s policies. A hustings is an ideal opportunity to meet all the candidates on equal terms, possibly ask questions, assess them and decide how to vote. Some candidates like them; the sitting MP generally does not. They can be uncomfortable for all, but so they should be.

I am organising a hustings in Midsomer Norton. It should be a lively affair.

Robin Anderson

Bath

The anniversary Putin’s yobs missed

Observing the virtuous efforts of Putin’s “Night Wolves” bikers to commemorate the final Russian advance on Berlin (report, 27 April), it seems a shame that they should have missed another equally heroic anniversary.

The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of August 1939 triggered Hitler’s, and shortly afterwards Stalin’s, invasion of Poland, and enabled the latter to then invade Finland, the Baltic states and Romania. Nor should we forget Russia’s subsequent annexation of generous chunks of the countries concerned, a form of “protective custody” which underpins the argument used to justify Russia’s current actions in Crimea, Ukraine and elsewhere .

Yet for all the yobbish triumphalism of Putin’s ersatz “Mother Russia” revivalism, could not our own and other European governments explain rather more effectively to the Russian people, never mind their leaders, why their various commemorations are not received with quite the gratitude that they seem to expect ?

Christopher Dawes

London W11

Battle for the vote in Victorian Britain

Your Voters’ Handbook No 13 (27 April) states that the 1884 Reform Act gave the vote to all adult males. It still in fact left about 30 per cent of men without the franchise. These comprised male domestics, sons at home, soldiers in barracks, those who had not paid their rates and others. Of course women were excluded, except for a few who owned property and could vote in municipal elections.

The injustice that a great many adult males could not vote partly explains the difficulties the Women’s Social and Political Union had, in their struggle for suffrage, in persuading liberals and socialists to accept what was perceived as female exceptionalism.

Philip Brindle

Bedford