Hello and welcome to The Rundown, a podcast from Politics Home with me, Alan Tolhurst.

This week, we'll look at the government's plans to try and fix the UK's rental market.

With soaring rents, terrifying competition, no-fault evictions, poorly maintained properties and huge supply pressures,

trapping an increasingly large

cohort of tenants in a system that means they may never own their own homes.

To discuss the renter's rights bill and how it will look to solve some of these issues,

I'm delighted to be joined by Joe Powell, Labor MP for Kensington and Bayswater, who sits

on the Housing Select Committee, as well as Rachine Lannigan, journalist and author, whose debut

novel, I Want to Go Home but I'm Already There, has been built as a Gothic novel for Generation

Renton. Alongside them, we have Tom Darling, Director of the Renters Reform Coalition, a group

of 21 housing organisations campaigning for stronger renter's rights, Charlie True, head of policy

at the charity shelter, and Chris Norris,

Director of Policy and Campaigns at the National Residential Landlord Association.

So I'll start with you, Tom. Just talk us through, like, what is the kind of the situation

for rent at the moment? We hear about how difficult things are for people trying to rent and

kind of the, I think,

something like average prices went up by around 12% I think last year. And just talk us through

how, kind of how the situation is. Thanks very much, Alan. Well, I think you had a good synopsis

there at the start, actually. I put a tweet out the other day. And it was, I think, sort of making

fun of the fact that rents were now rising at a

slightly lower rate than they were previously. I think it was 8.8% they were now rising by

as against 9% and above which they'd been rising for for the previous years, making fun of

...