Visiting the hyper-marginal seat of Hampstead and Kilburn this morning to outline how Labour will help generation rent, shadow housing minister Emma Reynolds MP will have heard the real challenges facing people who rent privately.

This seat is exactly the type of place to be found, particularly in London and other cities, where there has been explosion in those privately renting. The combination of rising house prices and a dearth of truly affordable housing has led to rocketing numbers in the private rented sector.

There are now more than nine million renters in England, and more than 1.3 million families privately renting. Gone are the days when private renting was a transition tenure for many on their way to owner-occupation or a council home, leaving only the most marginalised at the mercy of exploitative private landlords.

But the sector has certainly not adjusted to its more mainstream positioning – either through good supply driving out bad or through stronger regulation. Regulation is sorely needed, to bring the sector up to the standards consumers would expect elsewhere.

This means ending rip-off letting agent fees for tenants. According to Shelter, one in four people in England and Wales have been charged unfair fees; one in seven have been charged more than £500 in fees. Labour say this will save £2.5 billion over the course of the next parliament – or £624 for the average tenant.

Given the fact that private renting has become much more of a long-term prospect, especially for families, tenants deserve a more stable, long-term deal than than they have at the moment. Labour is right to call for three year tenancies to give renters security and greater peace of mind. It is the norm in many European countries and what many enlightened landlords already offer. It means that people can put down roots in a community, without the risk of being turfed out of their home – or pay the premium in the form of a rent hike.

Which brings us to the last element of Labour’s announcement today – ending excessive rent rises by putting a ceiling on rent increases during the new three year tenancies. This is not about punishing landlords for the sake of it, some landlords already do this voluntarily, it is about preventing exploitation of an increasingly large group of tenants.

For some, this will not be radical enough, falling short of full rent controls. But as housing guru Steve Hilditch argues, be careful what you campaign for. Calls for a pan-London private rent cap set at social rent levels might well drive down rents, but could risk driving out good landlords with the bad. This could ultimately lead to more homelessness, the sort of instability for private tenants which Labour’s reforms are designed to fix and create a huge headache for local authorities who already face enormous pressure on their council waiting lists.

Perhaps because it is still the party of landlords, not tenants, the Tories have failed to seize the reigns of reform needed to make this market work. Labour is right to make this a strong priority, vowing to introduce legislation on the private rented sector in its first queen’s speech.

Indeed, it is ironic that a group of the country’s biggest property developers – many of whom are donors to the Tory party – have condemned a scheme allowing them to avoid potentially hundreds of millions of pounds in affordable housing contributions.

Unless its owner-occuption, the Tories simply do not understand housing. All of their planning reforms, all of their attempts to stimulate the market, have been aimed at home owners. This latest move shows how little they understand social housing or the private rented sector.

You even have one Tory council, Barnet, trying to set its own rents at 80 per cent market value – destroying the concept of council housing in one stroke.

For too long, all parties have ignored housing and the fundamental truth needed to solve these problems: we need to build more, of all tenures. Labour’s 200,000 more units a year must be a starting point, not simply an aspiration.

However, in addressing the private rented sector, Labour is talking to a key and growing demographic. The policy solutions are fair, and will reform a market which can often fail. With less than 100 days to go to the election, it is also talking to a slice of the electorate who have been ignored by politicians for too long.

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Mike Katz is a member of Progress. He tweets @MikeKatz

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Photo: Nico Hogg