This Government are committed to driving improvements in both social and private rented homes. This spring we will publish our White Paper setting out our ambitious proposals to reform the private rented sector, including exploring a legally binding decent homes standard as well as a landlord register. We are driving forward reform of social housing quality through our social housing White Paper commitments, including a review of the decent homes standard.
One in four properties in the private rented sector are classed as non-decent. Every day that the Government delay their White Paper is a day that millions spend in cold, insecure, unsafe and unaffordable homes. The words “levelling up” will ring hollow in the minds of millions of tenants living in these awful, awful conditions. Will the Minister commit that the White Paper will actually have teeth to resolve the crisis that we are seeing in our communities and hold rogue landlords to account, which is not happening now?
I have tremendous respect for the hon. Gentleman and his work, and the work of the Select Committee in total. I will be working very closely with them to ensure that the White Paper does indeed have teeth and that our collective efforts drive down the number of non-decent homes. The target set in the levelling-up White Paper was to reduce the number by 50% by 2030.