If you’re an MP, most weeks bring new examples of why we need a fitness for habitation bill. Only last week, an elderly lady told me about her two spells in hospital for hypothermia after taping up the windows in her council flat to keep out the cold didn’t work. Another family had to close off two rooms, living and sleeping in their living room because it was dangerously cold.

A couple with young children showed me around their private flat where a shower and toilet were just plywood cubicles in the kitchen. Black mould coated the walls of another badly converted basement flat. I’ve walked into a property where the damp was so bad it hit you like a punch in the chest, and listened to a young mum, frantic about the health of her children. They had been born premature and were already dealing with breathing difficulties.

The habitable homes bill could transform lives. MPs must back it Read more

Most MPs will have similar stories, and know, like me, that bad housing damages physical and mental health, and blights lives. That is before we get to Grenfell Tower, where despite residents warning about the risks arising from the design and structure of the building, 71 people died.

The fact is, while most landlords – social and private – act responsibly towards their tenants, a substantial minority do not. There are one million properties unfit for human habitation.

Council environmental health officers do fine work, but we know the vast majority of substandard homes are not subject to local authority enforcement. Many tenants have little protection and cannot legally challenge their landlords themselves. It is for this reason that so many organisations, including the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, the Residential and the National Landlord’s Associations and the Law Society are joining Shelter and Generation Rent in backing the bill.

As a London MP whose constituency includes areas once notorious for slum landlords like Peter Rachman and Nicholas Von Hoogstraten, these issues have long been dear to my heart. Two years ago, with a place further down the Private Members’ Bill list, I brought forward a version of this bill, and saw it “talked out” by opponents.

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An attempt to amend the Housing and Planning Act was also unsuccessful. This time, better placed, I tried again, and I am delighted the government has agreed to give the bill support.

But we’ve not won yet. The Private Members’ Bill process is always unpredictable and we may well still need MPs to vote this through to the next stage. MPs, who pack Fridays with all the constituency work that doesn’t fit into the Parliamentary week, often aren’t in the commons on a Friday.

That’s understandable, but this is an important chance to strengthen tenant’s rights. There should be no place in 21st century Britain for rogue landlords, hazardous and unhealthy homes and tenants without the power to act against them. The Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Bill will take us one more step towards that end.

Karen Buck is the MP for Westminster North

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