Mr. Paul Goldrick-Kelly:

I will make a short intervention reiterating what has been said, but there is an overarching aspect to this in that what would be a game changer is the idea of an integrated market. The key here is that the cost rental model would enter into the market as a large enough player that it would influence developments elsewhere. Private sector, for-profit providers would have to respond to rents set in this cost rental model. It would act not simply to house people on current lists, which is undoubtedly important, but also act to stabilise the market as a whole and prevent these swings back and forth. That would influence the question of profitability or percentage of market rent. This system itself would enter into the setting of market rent. Markets would have to respond to the rents in the cost rental sector.

It should be seen as an intervention with many facets. There is the intermediate term of housing people who need to be housed, and that is crucial, and the issue of supply, but there is the longer-term issue of having a housing market that is stable over time and is not subject to these swings which we have seen.