Charles Amos

Recently a landlord, Mr Cao, attempted to increase the rent on his central Manchester flat by £50 a month from £1,650 to £1,700. The tenant, Ms Nau, brought the increase to a tribunal under the Renters' Rights Act, which only allows rent increases once a year and only in line with the open market rent. Ultimately, the tribunal decided to cut the rent by £200, as they believed it had already exceeded the open market rent. This is rent control by the backdoor; shortages and reduced quality of housing will inevitably follow. Tribunals have no place in second-guessing the true open market rent, nor, even were they omniscient economic planners, would justice warrant stripping landlords of the freedom to set the rent on their private properties anyway.

This week, 17.5 million people on various benefits including the state pension and disability living allowance will receive a £10 Christmas bonus. It's about time though, that Keir Starmer played Scrooge and finally abolished the bonus altogether. For, unlike their Dickensian forebears, poor pensioners this Christmas won't be going without food or warmth. In fact, they have more than enough of both. When the Christmas bonus was introduced by the Tory minister Keith Joseph more than 50 years ago, the basic argument was that pensioners needed the money to cope with that year's soaring inflation of 7.1 per cent.

Rachel Reeves has shown just how spineless this government is by U-turning on her flagship policy of cutting winter fuel allowance. Instead of sensibly offering only the poorest pensioners help during the coldest months, nine million pensioners on total incomes less than £35,000 will receive it. When a government with a majority of 174 seats can’t cut government spending by £1.6 billion, or, less than 0.2 per cent of its budget, there is little hope for sorting out the nation’s finances with impending demographic disaster on the horizon.