RENT increases during the pandemic have proved that controls are an “urgent and necessary step” as part of a national recovery from the pandemic, MSPs have been told.

Members of the Scottish Parliament’s Housing Committee heard yesterday that private rents across the country were already unaffordable, but coronavirus had pushed many tenants to breaking point.

Living Rent, Scotland’s tenants’ union, said research had shown rents in parts of the country had risen by up to 7.3% since the beginning of the pandemic.

The union’s remarks came in evidence to the committee on the proposed Fair Rent Bill, introduced by Labour MSP Pauline McNeill (inset), which would impose limits on the level that landlords can increase rent year-on-year.

Living Rent pointed to “dramatic” rent rises over the last year, along with research from housing charity Shelter which showed that across the UK more than 450,000 people now lived in fear of homelessness as a result of the pandemic.

They said this exposed the extent to which economic difficulties caused by the virus had forced hundreds of thousands of private renters into debt, or make dramatic cutbacks on vital expenditure such as food and heating.

Gordon Maloney, who presented evidence on behalf of the union, said: “The situation for tenants across Scotland was already disastrous before the pandemic, but nobody can turn a blind eye to it now.

“If we are serious about tackling poverty and homelessness in Scotland, rent controls are both an urgent and necessary step that must be part of national recovery from the pandemic.

“As we head towards the May elections, parties across Parliament need to wake up to the crisis and take action to protect tenants – even if that means standing up to the interests of landlords.”

In his evidence, Maloney said that apart from health impacts, there were other “crucial” reasons to link quality of housing to rent controls, one being that

Scotland’s private rented sector (PRS) was among the most “energy inefficient” of the country’s housing.

“Given that roughly half of Scotland’s CO2 emissions are from heating, the potential for effectively incentivising these improvements to dramatically reduce the carbon impact of Scotland’s PRS is an important opportunity,” he said.

Maloney said it went without saying that reducing rents in the private sector could have an “enormous and positive impact” on private tenants, who had been described by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation as the “new face” of poverty in Scotland.

He added: “The inequality and poverty faced by private tenants in Scotland is worse for some than others.

“In particular, the gender and ethnic pay gap means that high rents in the PRS, which are unaffordable for all tenants, are particularly unaffordable for women and BAME people, who are disproportionately likely to live in the PRS.

“Reducing rents, therefore, has the ability to also represent a significant step forwards in gender and racial equality.”