Another prominent Labour politician has thrown his weight behind rent controls.

And Mark Griffin – who is the party’s housing spokesman in the Scottish Parliament – says the controls should be introduced sooner rather than later.

The ruling Scottish National Party, in a loose alliance with the Scottish Greens, wants to introduce controls before the end of the current Parliamentary term in Scotland – which is three years from now.

However Griffin, speaking on STV, has said: “There’s no need for it to be so late in the parliament because it just gives landlords the opportunity to ramp prices up before any cap comes in. We should be looking to do this now,” he said.

“My [Labour] colleague, Pauline McNeill, had a private member’s Bill in the last parliament to do this, so why are we waiting to the end of this parliament?

“People can’t wait. We can see the cost of living going through the roof just now and people absolutely struggling to make ends meet.

“So it needs to be brought in and it needs to be brought in right away.”

Griffin believes two years of Covid have accelerated the need for controls because of the overheating housing market.

He told the TV service: “I think one thing the pandemic has done is that a lot of people have been stuck in their homes to a large degree for the last two years so they’re maybe getting a bit fed up. They either want to change their homes or move homes. 

“So there’s a huge amount of pressure right across the whole housing sector and the private rented sector’s no different to that.

“So when you’ve got a lot of people looking for a move, or a different option, then you can see that the housing market itself is overheating.

“And people are being charged more and more to buy a property or to rent a property.

“So that’s why we think the government should step in. We agree with the [SNP] government that there should be a rent control system, we just want them to bring it in faster.”

So far Labour members of government and councils in London, Bristol and Wales have also spoken up for urgent rent controls.

The SNP and Greens have gone to a formal consultation on radical plans to reform the private rental sector, with rent controls as a major element.

The proposals put out for consultation include:

– increasing penalties for illegal evictions and stronger enforcement;

– restricting evictions during winter;

– national rent controls; 

– giving tenants greater flexibility to personalise their homes and keep pets;

– introducing a new Housing Standard to apply to all homes;

– establishing a private rented sector regulator to uphold these standards and ensure the system is fair for both landlords and tenants;

– setting minimum standards for energy efficiency, making homes cheaper to heat while contributing to Scotland’s climate change targets.