More than 100 MPs earn over £10,000 a year as landlords
More than 100 MPs have earned over £10,000 a year as landlords over the course of this parliament, research from Sky News has found.
A total of 83 Tories have declared they received the sizeable rental payments since the last election in December 2019, along with 18 Labour MPs, four Liberal Democrats and one member of the SNP.
But many more could be benefiting from a smaller income as landlords, as MPs only have to publish it on the register of interests if rent tops the £10,000 annual figure.
The numbers come as the long-awaited Renters’ Reform Bill returns to the Commons on Wednesday, with campaigners demanding stronger action to make the market fairer for those renting their homes.
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The majority of the MPs found in Sky News’ research were landlords of residential properties – with 104 of them having a stake in over 217 homes.
But 12 also let out commercial properties, 12 make an income from renting their farms, and one even leases a fishery.
A total of seven cabinet members made the list, with Chancellor Jeremy Hunt clocking up the largest portfolio – seven flats in Southampton, 50% of a holiday home in Italy and 50% of an office building in London.
Three shadow cabinet members also have the additional income – though no more than the single property owned by shadow foreign secretary David Lammy in Tottenham, London.
Vested interest of landlords
However, the MP with the biggest list of rental incomes was the Conservative member for Sedgefield, Paul Howell, who lists two flats in County Durham, five houses in Durham, nine houses in Darlington and an apartment in Spain on his register of interests.
None of this breaks any rules for MPs, as long as they declare their interests.
However, the statistics come as a row rolls on between the government and campaigners over the influence of landlords on the Renters’ Reform Bill.
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One million renters forced to move
Research exclusively shared with Sky News last week showed almost one million private renters had been served a Section 21 since the Conservatives first promised to ban them in April 2019.
Yet, the government agreed to an indefinite delay to outlawing the mechanism, reportedly after a group of Conservative backbenchers – including some landlords – raised concerns the courts were not prepared for the legal cases that could replace them.
‘Colossal failure’
The chief executive of homelessness charity Shelter, Polly Neate said the legislation would be a “colossal failure” without the scrapping of no fault evictions at its heart.
“Tenants campaigned tirelessly to get this bill on the table, but this government has proven that renters’ safety and security is less important to it than bowing to the self-interests of a minority of landlord backbenchers,” she added.
“While ministers run scared of a few dozen of their own MPs, more than 500 private renters are slapped with a no-fault eviction notice every day.”
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Shelter’s chief executive: ‘We are going to see private renters tipped into homelessness’
Speaking to broadcasters ahead of the legislation returning to parliament, Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove could not guarantee Section 21s would be banned before the next election – which has to take place by January 2025.
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He insisted his “determination” to end them was “iron clad”, but it would depend on opposition parties and the House of Lords supporting the whole bill.
“It’s important to stress that the overwhelming majority of landlords are providing a very valuable service,” said Mr Gove.
He added: “It’s vitally important that after 30 years without legislation to improve the private rented sector, and with the private rented sector constituting nearly a fifth of housing overall, that we do ensure that it works effectively.
“And it’s not about pitting landlord against tenant, nor is it about demonising MPs of all parties. It’s about making sure that we have the balanced package that makes sure the private rented sector works for everyone.”
Michael Gove leads on housing for the government. Pic: PA
Bill ‘abolishes Section 21s in name only’
However, a spokesperson for campaign group Generation Rent told Sky News: “Efforts to maintain landlords’ power in the bill will undermine improvements that would benefit renters and ultimately improve the reputation of the sector.”
The Renters Reform Coalition, made up of 20 charities, also warned that, as the bill stood, it “abolishes Section 21s in name only”.
They added: “This legislation is intended to give the impression of improving conditions for renters, but in fact it preserves the central power imbalance at the root of why renting in England is in crisis.”
But the chief executive of the National Residential Landlords Association, Ben Beadle, supported the bill, saying it provided stability for both landlords and tenants, and would keep rental homes in the market.
“Greater security for tenants will mean nothing if the rental homes are not there in the first place,” he added.
Sky News contacted the Conservatives, Labour and the three MPs named in the piece, but did not receive a response.
A Lib Dem spokesperson said: “Time and time again the Conservatives have failed renters and acted against people’s interests.
“Lib Dem MPs in parliament have long fought for renters’ rights and will continue to do so.”
Politics
Specialist teams and online investigators deployed across England and Wales to tackle ‘national emergency’ of violence against women and girls
Specialist investigation teams for rape and sexual offences are to be created across England and Wales as the home secretary declares violence against women and girls a “national emergency”.
Shabana Mahmood said the dedicated units will be in place across every force by 2029 as part of Labour’s violence against women and girls (VAWG) strategy due to be launched later this week.
The use of Domestic Abuse Protection Orders (DAPOs), which had been trialled in several areas, will also be rolled out across England and Wales. They are designed to target abusers by imposing curfews, electronic tags and exclusion zones.
The orders cover all forms of domestic abuse, including economic abuse, coercive and controlling behaviour, stalking and ‘honour’-based abuse. Breaching the terms can carry a prison term of up to five years.
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Govt ‘thinking again’ on abuse strategy
Nearly £2m will also be spent funding a network of officers to target offenders operating within the online space.
Teams will use covert and intelligence techniques to tackle violence against women and girls via apps and websites.
A similar undercover network funded by the Home Office to examine child sexual abuse has arrested over 1,700 perpetrators.
Abuse is ‘national emergency’
Ms Mahmood said in a statement: “This government has declared violence against women and girls a national emergency.
“For too long, these crimes have been considered a fact of life. That’s not good enough. We will halve it in a decade.
“Today, we announce a range of measures to bear down on abusers, stopping them in their tracks. Rapists, sex offenders and abusers will have nowhere to hide.”
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Angiolini Inquiry: Recommendations are ‘not difficult’
The target to halve violence against women and girls in a decade is a Labour manifesto pledge.
The government said the measures build on existing policy, including facial recognition technology to identify offenders, improving protections for stalking victims, making strangulation a criminal offence and establishing domestic abuse specialists in 999 control rooms.
Read more from Sky News:
Demands for violence and abuse reforms
Women still feel unsafe on streets
Minister ‘clarifies’ violence strategy
Labour has ‘failed women’
But the Conservatives said Labour had “failed women” and “broken its promises” by delaying the publication of the violence against women and girls strategy.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said that Labour “shrinks from uncomfortable truths, voting against tougher sentences and presiding over falling sex-offender convictions. At every turn, Labour has failed women”.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood will be on Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips on Sky News this morning from 8.30am.
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) published a crypto wallet and custody guide investor bulletin on Friday, outlining best practices and common risks of different forms of crypto storage for the investing public.
The SEC’s bulletin lists the benefits and risks of different methods of crypto custody, including self-custody versus allowing a third-party to hold digital assets on behalf of the investor.
If investors choose third-party custody, they should understand the custodian’s policies, including whether it “rehypothecates” the assets held in custody by lending them out or if the service provider is commingling client assets in a single pool instead of holding the crypto in segregated customer accounts.
Crypto wallet types were also outlined in the SEC guide, which broke down the pros and cons of hot wallets, which are connected to the internet, and offline storage in cold wallets.
Hot wallets carry the risk of hacking and other cybersecurity threats, according to the SEC, while cold wallets carry the risk of permanent loss if the offline storage fails, a storage device is stolen, or the private keys are compromised.
The SEC’s crypto custody guide highlights the sweeping regulatory change at the agency, which was hostile to digital assets and the crypto industry under former SEC Chairman Gary Gensler’s leadership.
Related: SEC sends warning letters to ETF issuers targeting untamed leverage
The crypto community celebrates the SEC guide as a transformational change in the agency
“The same agency that spent years trying to kill the industry is now teaching people how to use it,” Truth For the Commoner (TFTC) said in response to the SEC’s crypto custody guide.
The SEC is providing “huge value” to crypto investors by educating prospective crypto holders about custody and best practices, according to Jake Claver, the CEO of Digital Ascension Group, a company that provides services to family offices.
SEC regulators published the guide one day after SEC Chair Paul Atkins said that the legacy financial system is moving onchain.
On Thursday, the SEC gave the green light to the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC), a clearing and settlement company, to begin tokenizing financial assets, including equities, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and government debt securities.
Magazine: Unstablecoins: Depegging, bank runs and other risks loom
Greens leader Zack Polanski has rejected claims his party would push for open borders on immigration, telling Sky News it is “not a pragmatic” solution for a world in “turmoil”.
Mr Polanski distanced himself from his party’s “long-range vision” for open borders, saying it was not in his party’s manifesto and was an “attack line used by opponents” to question his credibility.
It came as Mr Polanski, who has overseen a spike in support in the polls to double figures, refused to apologise over controversial comments he made about care workers on BBC Question Time that were criticised across the political spectrum.
Mr Polanski was speaking to Sky News earlier this week while in Calais, where he joined volunteers and charities to witness how French police handle the arrival of migrants in the town that is used as a departure point for those wanting to make the journey to the UK.
He told Sky News he had made the journey to the French town – once home to the “Jungle” refugee camp before it was demolished in 2016 – to tackle “misinformation” about migration and to make the case for a “compassionate, fair and managed response” to the small boats crisis.
He said that “no manifesto ever said anything about open borders” and that the Greens had never stood at a general election advocating for them.
“Clearly when the world is in political turmoil and we have deep inequality, that is not a situation we can move to right now,” he said.
“That would also involve massive international agreements and cooperation. That clearly is not a pragmatic conversation to have right now. And very often the government try to push that attack line to make us look not pragmatic.”
The party’s manifesto last year did not mention open borders, but it did call for an end to the “hostile environment”, more safe and legal routes and for the Home Office to be abolished and replaced with a department of migration.
Asked why the policy of minimal restrictions on migration had been attributed to his party, Mr Polanski said open borders was part of a “long-range vision of what society could look like if there was a Green government and if we’d had a long time to fix some of the systemic problems”.
‘We should recognise the contribution migrants make’
Mr Polanski, who was elected Green Party leader in September and has been compared to Nigel Farage over his populist economic policies, said his position was one of a “fair and managed” migration system – although he did not specify whether that included a cap on numbers.
He acknowledged that there needed to be a “separate conversation” about economic migration but that he did not believe any person who boarded a small boat was in a “good situation”.
While Mr Polanski stressed that he believed asylum seekers should be able to work in Britain and pay taxes, he also said he believed in the need to train British workers in sectors such as care, where one in five are foreign nationals.
Asked what his proposals for a fair and managed migration system looked like, and whether he supported a cap on numbers, Mr Polanski said: “We have 100,000 vacancies in the National Health Service. One in five care workers in the care sector are foreign nationals.
Zack Polanski speaks to Sky News from a warehouse in Calais where charities and organisations provide migrants with essentials.
“Now, of course, that is both British workers and we should be training British workers, but we should recognise the contribution that migrants and people who come over here make.”
I’m not going to apologise’
Mr Polanski also responded to the criticism he attracted over his comments about care workers on Question Time last week, where he told the audience: “I don’t know about you, but I don’t particularly want to wipe someone’s bum” – before adding: “I’m very grateful for the people who do this work.”
His comments have been criticised by a number of Labour MPs, including Wes Streeting, the health secretary, who said: “Social care isn’t just ‘wiping someone’s bum’. It is a hard, rewarding, skilled professional job.
“This is immigration as exploitation.”
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Asked whether he could understand why some care workers might feel he had talked down to them, the Greens leader replied: “I care deeply about care workers. When I made those comments, it’s important to give a full context. I said ‘I’m very grateful to people who do this important work’ and absolutely repeat that it’s vital work.”
“Of course, it is not part of the whole job, and I never pretended it was part of the whole job.”
Mr Polanski said he “totally” rejected the suggestion that he had denigrated the role of care workers in the eyes of the public and said his remarks were made in the context of a “hostile Question Time” where he had “three right-wing panellists shouting at me”.
Pressed on whether he wanted to apologise, he replied: “I’m not going to apologise for being really clear that I’m really grateful to the people who do this really vital work. And yes, we should be paying them properly, too.”
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