A study by the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants found that 42 per cent of landlords said the Right to Rent scheme made them less likely to rent a property to someone who doesn’t have a British passport.
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“If passed in its current form, [the bill] could damage social cohesion, cause harm to children, have a deleterious effect on civil liberties and lead to widespread casual discrimination”, he wrote.
‘Of course, we have come a long way as a society since landlords displayed unwelcoming notices in their windows.
“At the other end of the spectrum, landlords who become aware of the new Bill and become over cautious could instead open themselves up to challenges on the grounds of discrimination, leaving landlords between a rock and a hard place”.
Burnham hit out at the proposed requirement for landlords to investigate the immigration status of tenants, saying it would make a few of them unwilling to offer homes to people with “foreign-sounding names or accents”.
Government proposals forcing agents and landlords to check the immigration status of tenants risk a serious breach of human rights according to an official watchdog.
He said research smashes David Cameron’s vow to end the scandal of people being rejected for having “ethnic-sounding names”.
He said that Right to Rent would make “the very problem that Cameron said he wanted to challenge” worse.
The sceme is part of Home Secretary Theresa May’s immigration bill which is being discussed in the House of Commons this week.
“Many landlords were already carrying out similar checks before the scheme started, and many in the West Midlands have reported that it is possible to incorporate the checks into normal tenant vetting procedures”.
“The aim of the Immigration Bill is to make Britain a “hostile environment” for illegal migrants”. Failure to comply could lead to penalties, such as a fine or imprisonment.
Burnham said yesterday that Labour would support “proportionate” proposals in the immigration bill that “tackle illegal immigration, strengthen our borders and stop the exploitation of migrants by unscrupulous employers and landlords”.
Specialist lender Commercial Trust has warned that landlords who fail to carry out checks face the “unnerving” prospect of a possible prison sentence.
The government says it want to stamp out abuse of the system, but Labour has branded the bill “disproportionate, divisive [and] deceitful”.
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‘Right to Rent checks must be performed on a non-discriminatory basis – landlords are advised to check and record identity documents for all new tenants. The Home Office insisted the West Midlands was chosen because of its diverse housing stock, and not because of its high immigrant population.
