On Tuesday Tory MPs voted down proposed new rules that would have compelled private landlords to ensure their properties are fit for human habitation. Like many, I am disappointed by the wilful, almost spiteful, move to keep renters living without the safeguards one would think are reasonable in Britain in 2016. What I am not, however, is remotely surprised. For those of us who want a fairer deal for renters, this feels a lot like Groundhog Day – with the joke very much on us.

We’ve been here before, you see. In October last year the Labour MP Karen Buck put forward a private member’s bill “to amend the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 to require that residential rented accommodation is provided and maintained in a state of fitness for human habitation”. The bill was opposed by a Tory MP, Philip Davies, who believed it would be an unnecessary regulatory burden for landlords. Seriously.

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The characterisation of better protection for renters as “unnecessary” pretty much tells you everything you need to know about tenants’ rights in this country. Moves to make renting fairer and safer are met with determined indifference by policymakers, and the needs of this large, and growing section of the population are almost totally ignored.

It’s not illegal to evict a tenant rather than repair faults in a rental property, for example (a practice known as retaliatory eviction). Parliament had an opportunity to change this with the tenancies (reform) bill back in 2014 – but didn’t. No doubt this was considered surplus to legislative requirements.

As someone who runs a website that enables tenants to review properties they have rented, I see stories on a daily basis that underscore why robust legislation is needed to protect tenants: rodent infestations, black mould, totally insecure tenure, and landlords who resolutely refuse to repair their properties when things go wrong are all scarily commonplace.

The private rental sector is completely inadequate at providing a safe and secure roof over renters’ heads. In the rest of Europe tenants have much better protection, and in the US, New Zealand and Australia the law has sheltered renters from retaliatory eviction for almost 50 years.

The property market in this country is currently experiencing the lowest levels of home ownership for 29 years. Eye-wateringly high property prices, coupled with the lack of availability of mortgage credit, have put ownership beyond the reach of many of us.

For young people particularly, unless you have considerable private wealth and/or parents with enough cash to get you on to the housing ladder, you may as well forget about owning your own home. Renting is not a lifestyle choice – it’s an essential fact of life.

We hear lots of rhetoric from the government about getting people on the housing ladder but absolutely nothing about making renting fit for purpose. With more than 9 million of us renting with little to no prospect of ownership, shouldn’t we try to make renting safe and secure before we do anything else?

We’ve essentially been lumped into two distinct economic categories: winners and losers. The winners see the value of their properties skyrocket beyond their wildest dreams; the losers are forced to rent in a system that is, quite simply, broken. It’s deemed an unnecessary hindrance to make homes safe for renters, and the noises we hear from parliament come across loud and clear: “Suck it up, losers – you’re not worth protecting.”