It was obviously approved – second reading is always about the principle of the Bill and the government has a thumping majority – though the volume of speeches on both sides suggests it’ll have a bumpy ride both at amendments stages and in the Lords.

Most of the afternoon was spent hearing Conservative MPs open their speeches with a warning not to demonise landlords, and Labour MPs explaining why they should be demonised.

Desmond Swayne (New Forest West, Con, declared landlord) was first to talk student accommodation. His concern was giving tenants the right to cancel a tenancy – because re-letting a property within the academic year can present a considerable difficulty.

No mention, of course, of the fact that once a student for a house that they’re on the hook for a year’s rent – even if they drop out or their circumstances change. Also, I think I can argue, a “considerable difficulty”.

Secretary of State Angela Rayner said that the Bill strikes a balance by accommodating the unique circumstances of students – the ability of landlords to evict student HMOs in the summer.

That doesn’t accommodate the circumstances of students whose academic year doesn’t run from September to September, might need to stay on in the city as a graduate, or who as a care leaver face no other housing to fall back on. Students are “other” people, see – the ones in MPs’ imaginations.

Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington, LD, declared shareholder in French Weir Affordable Homes) was concerned that the provision allowing landlords to hurl students onto the streets between June and September only applied to HMOs. What about turfing other students out? No response from the government on that.

The afternoon had begun with a large number of Conservatives in the chamber lined up to speak – but at just the moment that the leadership contest gossip dropped, their side suddenly cleaned out, giving Labour, Green and some Lib Dem MPs a clear run in the tenant corner.

Siân Berry (Brighton Pavilion, Green) was all for rent controls – highlighting the representations she’d had from her Acorn branch and NUS over the need to secure expensive guarantors:

It fuels discrimination against working-class, estranged and international students, and fuels homelessness among students.

Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood, Lab) too was worried about guarantor arrangements – partly because one of her constituents’ son had died by suicide:

The tenancy, which had not started when this young man died, included a guarantor agreement signed by his parents. After their son’s death, the letting agency insisted that the agreement applied even in the event of a tenant’s death and, shockingly, began pursuing my constituents for rent payments. While facing the unbearable loss of their son, my constituents were forced to find another student to take on his tenancy in order to be relieved of their responsibility for the rent.

In Abtisam Mohamed’s (Sheffield Central, Lab) constituency, nearly half of her constituents are private renters, many of them students – and having visited some of the properties, was horrified by the extent of the damp, mould and disrepair that many are forced to live with. She was also keen to see a cap on in-tenancy rent increases at the lower end of either inflation or wage growth.

The government’s plan is merely to limit in-tenancy increases to once a year, and give tenants the ability to challenge those increases if above market rates. Of course because students move out a lot, that won’t work in the student market – Mohamed could start by at least asking the government to apply its rent increases provisions to properties not tenancies.

John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway, Con) had “seen the reality” of similar measures to those in the Bill in Scotland, which he said had driven up costs for renters, reduced choice, and made it “almost impossible” to get student accommodation in our wonderful university cities. He may be confused about the “reality”, which is actually that Scotland’s student housing crisis has been caused by unrestricted numbers growth, as we demonstrated on the site a while back.

Summing up for a sparse opposition, David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner, Con) didn’t want to see a situation where landlords, wary of a two-month notice period, decide to take the property off the student market and put it somewhere else. The lack of evidence that that’s happened in Scotland had passed him by. Maybe he’s not a regular reader of Wonk Corner.

There’s plenty of other problems with the Bill. Nobody seemed concerned about Purpose-Built Student Accommodation, and the way in which the Bill’s exemption of it will see a scenario where students’ rights in those properties will end up much worse then those in off-street housing. There’s also scope to amend the Higher Education and Research Act to give the Office for Students (OfS) the duties over information on supply and pricing that the Augar review imagined – and to put into law Universities UK’s guidance on planning and supply. DfE seems nowhere to be seen, as usual. Not its department, see.

Dodgy “all-inclusive” bills rent deals that are often nothing of the sort also need a look, and there’s an opportunity for local authorities to be collaborating with universities and SUs on enforcement, as we’ve seen across Europe. The enforcement that is there in the bill in the form of the new Ombuds is also going to need more thought given that students are likely to move out (or be turfed out) by the time it’s able to resolve a complaint.

It was left to Alex Sobel (Leeds Central and Headingley, Lab/Co-op) to take up the mantle of former Sheffield Central MP Paul Blomfield’s unofficial role as student champion of the house, whose contribution bears reading in full:

As the MP for a constituency with one of the largest private rented housing sectors in the UK—it has 17,740 private rental properties, the majority of which are rented to students—I want to use the debate to highlight problems faced by student renters, both in my constituency and across the country. Students are shouldering the burden of 14 years of Tory mismanagement of our economy. The dual housing and cost of living crisis is being compounded by landlords making it increasingly difficult for many students to secure housing. This leaves many in increasingly precarious situations.

Students in my constituency have told me of landlords asking them not just for a UK guarantor—the criterion for which is that the guarantor must own a UK property—but for deposits of up to 100% of annual rent. Such requirements disproportionately affect working-class students, care leavers, and those estranged from their families—groups that are already more vulnerable to poorer economic, educational and health outcomes. International students, too, face significant challenges, as most do not have family members with property in the UK. As one of my constituents, an international postgraduate student at Leeds University, told me:

My only viable option was using the guarantor service ‘Housing Hand’, which costs me an additional £50 a month on top of rent. I am a PhD student receiving the UKRI minimum stipend…The cost of living for food and rent alone is already difficult on this Toggle showing location ofColumn 375stipend, and, during the final week before the stipend is paid each month, I often struggle to maintain a healthy and balanced diet due to financial strain.”

Research conducted by students from the Centre for Homelessness Impact found that just 36% of universities provide help with rent guarantors, that even fewer provide a rent guarantor service for students, and that, as universities themselves are facing extreme financial difficulties, such a service will become ever more unlikely.

Renting as a student is already an uphill struggle. We know, for example, that student accommodation prices have increased by 61% since 2012. Information from the National Union of Students shows that two in five students have considered dropping out because of the cost of rent. When we are trying to encourage people to attend our world-leading institutions, which strengthen the skills potential of our country’s workforce, why do we put up so many barriers?

Our universities are the UK’s strongest source of soft power. International students in particular are left with nothing but bad choices: they must either find a UK guarantor or pay six months’ rent, or more, up front to their landlord. As one student told the all-party group for students:

International students often face more challenges than home students. We have heard stories of students paying months of rent, only to find out that they have been scammed, and that the place they thought they’d secured does not even exist.”

It is for those reasons that I would like the Government to consider banning landlords from demanding either UK rent guarantors or huge up-front payments, and perhaps limiting deposits to just three months’ rent. I would also like them to end the pressure for joint tenancies to be signed too early in the academic year, so that students need not commit to accommodation before they are ready, creating artificial panic in the market. Ultimately, we must remove barriers for care leavers, students and international students. We have heard from students that access to a rent guarantor is often a determining factor in their ability to continue their degree, or even access a university education in the first place.

Everyone deserves the opportunity to succeed in their academic journey without the added stress of housing insecurity. The Government have the opportunity, through this Bill, to break down a major barrier to all students’ right to pursue higher education. I hope that they will work with me on this.