I commend the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) for bringing in this important legislation for debate, and I know how much work she has done on this issue. I welcome the Minister—a former Whip—to her new position. I am a private landlord, so I refer the House to my entry in the register.
As we have heard today, everyone is entitled to a clean, safe and comfortable home. Indeed, one would have thought that that was a given, but the fact that we are discussing this legislation today illustrates that it clearly is not. Home really should be where the heart is, but there are long-standing concerns about property standards in both the social and private rented sectors. I have been made particularly aware of the issue not just through my work as an MP and my involvement in the Bill that became the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017, which was guided so well through the House by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), but supporting so many Adjournment debates, which
you probably sat through, Madam Deputy Speaker, with a former Housing Minister, the previous Member for Croydon Central, in which I heard so many harrowing cases of rogue landlords forcing people to live in squalor and making their lives hell. I am therefore pleased that the Bill will address some of those issues.