Market rents are artificial. There is nothing God-given about market rents because they are determined by landlords, largely on the basis of a shortage of affordable housing anyway. In so far as there is a subsidy, surely it is the subsidy that is paid in the form of housing benefit for private tenants, about which the Government propose to do nothing at all.
In addition to that, the noble Baroness referred to the need for consistency across all local authorities. She has not made an argument for that, she has merely stated it as a given. The Government do not take the same view about council tax. They did in a sense when they introduced the poll tax, and they seem to be making the equivalent mistake here with local authority rents. It is an absurd proposition that the same system should apply across all local authorities irrespective, for example, of the value of the housing and average local incomes. Where is the justification for the simple assertion that that must be the basis of the scheme?