Scotland faces a housing disaster. Rents are ballooning, especially in Edinburgh and Glasgow; incomes are stagnant; and while its house prices would make a Londoner laugh (the average over Scotland as a whole is less than £200,000, and even in Edinburgh under £300,000), they are up by some 10 per cent since 2023. The Scottish government is determined to do something about it. Unfortunately, there is every reason to think that its remedies, straight out of the left-wing SNP rulebook, will make things rather worse.

The whole caboodle enriches builders, real estate developers and comfortably-off property owners. And the people it is meant to help, young workers needing a leg up? Hardly at all

The whole caboodle enriches builders, real estate developers and comfortably-off property owners. And the people it is meant to help, young workers needing a leg up? Hardly at all

Last year MSPs passed the Housing (Scotland) Act, which will eventually make permanent the system of emergency rent controls introduced after Covid. From next year on the government gets the power to declare ‘rent control areas,’ limiting any rises, even on a change of tenancy, to inflation plus 1 per cent, or 6 per cent, whichever is lower.

Well meaning? Certainly. But like most such measures, it is likely to be........

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