Meeting of the Parliament 20 September 2023
I was about to come on to precisely that point. In proposing the extension, we have, of course, taken into account what is happening in the wider housing market. At present, the number of registered landlords has remained stable. Some data sources show that rents for newly advertised properties in some parts of Scotland are rising significantly. Such rates mirror those in comparable cities in the rest of the UK—not just London, which, of course, has a very overheated property market and where there has been a 13.5 per cent increase, but Southampton, where there has been a 10.7 per cent increase, and Manchester, where there has been a 13 per cent increase.
While tenants in the rest of the UK have faced a double hit of, at times, double-digit rent rises within tenancies as well as between tenancies, tenants in Scotland have faced only the latter. It was not possible to address the intertenancy rent increases using the emergency legislation. However, those increases reinforce the need for an effective national system of long-term rent control in Scotland. A thriving, well-regulated private rented sector is good for tenants as well as landlords, and well-regulated markets can, and do, attract investment to support good-quality affordable homes. We see that in other countries where rent control is part of the operation of the private rented sector.