I actually believe in rent control, and I don't own any houses apart from the one I live in. With a shortage of rental properties compared to demand, then without controls, rents will increase continually. With large-scale council house building pre-1979, the private rented sector declined. The private rented sector began to grow again after 1989 and is now the second-largest tenure in the UK after owner-occupation. Increases in the private sector rent levels and a focus on reducing housing benefit expenditure have led several commentators, and I agree with them, to call for the reintroduction of some form of private sector rent control. The Rent Act in 1965, introduced by the Labour Government led by Harold Wilson, regulated tenancies, with fair rents set by independent rent officers. That ended with the Local Government and Housing Act 1989, brought in by the Conservatives, and we mentioned 1989 earlier, as the date at which the increase in private rented accommodation started to go up.

What are the benefits of rent control? Affordability, it prevents displacement, neighbourhood stability. The argument that is made—Janet Finch-Saunders made it, which I voted out before she even spoke—I expect is that it reduces availability of rented property for stock renovation and improvement. Firstly, the high rent of privately rented properties has driven out first-time buyers. But I'll just talk about the area I come from of Plasmarl in Swansea. Initially, it had large numbers of privately rented properties, but, as council houses became available, my family, like many others, moved to these new council houses, and the housing left behind was sold, and many people, via a mortgage, became owner-occupiers and then undertook improvement of those homes. Now, these properties are bought and made available for private rent. I must have missed the large-scale renovation of the cheaper privately rented properties in east Swansea.

Alongside rent controls, we do need the large-scale building of social housing. In fact, I talk about that probably more often than people would like to hear it from me, but we need to build council houses at the rate we built them in the 1950s and 1960s. Rent control increases the availability of houses to be bought by people to live in, reduces the cost of rental, gives security on rental costs, removes the incentive to move one tenant out to bring one in paying a higher rent. I urge everyone to support this today. This is, effectively, a Labour policy; it's something that the Wilson Government brought it, which worked very well at rolling back the tide of fairness to poor and less well-off people, but the Tories in the 1980s got rid of it. We've got an opportunity to bring it back in now for the benefit of all the people renting in Wales. I urge everybody, especially my Labour colleagues, to support what is effectively a socialist solution.