Confiscate properties from rogue landlords, says senior Labour MP

Clive Betts says seizure threat would create ‘significant deterrent’ among those who treat fines as business cost

Do what we don’t like and we’ll seize your assets.

What could go wrong?

Rental homes should be confiscated from private landlords who repeatedly break the rules and exploit tenants, the head of the Commons housing committee has told the Guardian.

Clive Betts, the chair of the levelling up, housing and communities select committee, said handing courts the power would create a “significant deterrent” to landlords who treated fines for letting out squalid, unsafe and overcrowded homes as simply a cost of doing business.

As we noted yesterday it’s not always obvious that it’s “private” landlords doing the wrong thing:

Depending upon how you’d like to spin those classifications you could say that either is worse than the other. It is, perhaps, the lack of control on the part of the tenants from it being rental housing which is the problem, not dastardly landlordism nor state slummery.

So, Mr Betts, why is there that qualifier there? Private, not just landlord?

Not that we’d agree with you anyway but until you explain that no one should.

Fie, be off with you.