Labour’s Achievements, Representation of the People Bill, Social Media, Renters’ Reform Act and a bit more….
What’s the Labour government ever done for us?
- Taking £150 off energy bills
- Increasing the National Living Wage worth £900 a year
- Frozen rail fares for the first time in 30 years
- Frozen prescription fees to keep the cost under a tenner
- Lifted half a million children out of poverty
- Protected the triple lock – worth £1,900 over the Parliament
- Thousands more free breakfast clubs to open this year
- 3,000 more neighbourhood police officers will be on our streets
by March - Almost 120 community diagnostic centres will be open 7 days a week across the country by April – as we bring down waiting lists and renew our NHS
- New rights for renters and workers will come into effect in the Spring
- Inflation, interest rates and mortgage costs are falling and are forecast to keep falling
- Business confidence is up
- Retail sales and consumer spending are up
- FTSE 100 reaching an all-time high
- Six interest rate cuts
- 440,000 more people moved into work last year
- Wages up more than in the first 10 years of the last Government
Representation of the People Bill
The Government is fulfilling yet another manifesto commitment with the introduction of the Representation of the People Bill. The Bill will extend the franchise for UK elections to allow 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in all UK elections.
The Bill also brings forward reforms to tighten the rules on political donations. It introduces a ‘Know your Donor’ scheme requiring enhanced checks on larger donations to prevent the risk of foreign interference. It introduces tighter eligibility rules on donations from companies to ensure a genuine connection to the UK, and stricter rules and checks by unincorporated associations on the gifts they receive and donations they make. These reforms build on the existing political finance framework set out in the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, and will be supported by Electoral Commission guidance. We are also bringing forward secondary legislation which means political donors will be required to declare any benefits or sources of funding connected to their donation and will be liable for criminal prosecution for false declaration.
Social Media and Under-16s
In recent years, there has been a worrying trend of intimate images being used to threaten, intimidate and distress in particular women and girls. Under Labour’s new plans, companies will be told they must remove these distressing images within 48 hours of them being flagged, and a victim will only need to flag an image once for it to be removed across multiple platforms. Earlier this year, we called out abhorrent non-consensual intimate images being shared on Grok, which led to the function being removed, and we are legislating to make ‘nudification’ tools illegal and bringing chatbots – like Grok – within scope of the Online Safety Act. And we will close a loophole, so all AI chatbot providers must abide by the law or face the consequences.
But we will go further. We are determined put control back into the hands of victims. All police forces in England and Wales will have dedicated rape and sexual offence investigation teams by 2029 to catch vile perpetrators. We will Introduce measures such as Domestic Abuse Protection Orders. There will be a new criminal offence for spiking. And we will lay the groundwork for swift action after our consultation with parents and children – so we don’t have to wait years for new legislation every time technology changes. Our consultation be guided by what parents and children say they need now, not in several years’ time. It will look at:
- Setting a minimum age limit for social media
- Restricting harmful features like infinite scrolling
- Stopping children using VPNs
- Safeguarding children from sending and receiving nude images
- This isn’t a question of whether we will act, but how.
Renters’ Rights Act
The Act will get rid of no-fault evictions (known now as Section 21 evictions) and move to a simpler tenancy structure where all assured tenancies will provide more security for tenants and enable them to challenge poor practice and unfair rent increases without fear of being asked to move out. Stronger protections against backdoor eviction will mean that tenants are able to appeal against excessive above-market rents which are purely designed to force them out.
The new law will also: make it illegal for landlords and agents to discriminate against prospective tenants who are in receipt of benefits or who have children, so helping to ensure everyone is treated fairly when looking for a place to live; give tenants strengthened rights to request a pet in the property, which the landlord must consider and cannot unreasonably refuse; and end the practice of rental bidding by prohibiting landlords and agents from asking for, or accepting, offers above the advertised rent. Landlords and agents will be required to publish an asking rent for their property, and it will be illegal to accept offers made above this figure.
There will be a new Private Rented Sector Landlord Ombudsman who will provide quick, fair, impartial and binding resolution for tenants’ complaints about their landlord. This will bring the tenant-landlord complaint system into line with established practice for tenants in social housing and those who use property agents.
A Private Rented Sector Database will be set up to help landlords understand their legal obligations and demonstrate compliance (giving good landlords confidence in their position), together with providing better information to tenants so they can make informed decisions when entering into a tenancy agreement.
Finally, the Act will: apply the Decent Homes Standard to the private rented sector to give renters safer, better value homes and remove the blight of poor-quality accommodation; introduce ‘Awaab’s Law’ to set clear legal expectations about the timeframes within which landlords in the private rented sector must take action to make homes safe where they contain serious hazards; and strengthen local authority enforcement by expanding civil penalties and providing new investigatory powers.
There’s a lot in there, but in the years to come, I really think this legislation will be seen as a landmark.
Political and Parliamentary Activity
- Campaigning in Bramley, Hunslet, Beeston, Wakefield and Gorton
and Denton - Q&A with pupils from Hunslet Carr primary school
- Meeting with LCC officers about the Middleton Pride in Place
- Zoom call with residents of a leasehold block in Hunslet
- Visit to Dublin to meet the Irish Foreign Minister
- Oral questions in the House of Commons
- South Leeds Life Column