SIR – The story of Margaret and Eddie Tout being evicted from their home because their landlord is having the property repossessed for his failure to meet his mortgage payments is by no means unusual (Worcester News, June 23).

It is the result of the last New Labour government’s failure to build social housing and their reliance on the private sector to provide rented accommodation.

Buy-to-let allowed individuals to take out large mortgages on properties and then let them out at a profit.

This caused housing waiting lists to expand to nearly two million for social housing, and saw the cost of housing benefit rise from £11 billion in 2000 to £21 billion today.

The beneficiaries of housing benefit are landlords.

Almost all of the massive increase of £10 billion between 2000 and today has gone straight into the pockets of private landlords.

The Tories are now considering withdrawing housing benefit from the under-25s – as if this group with one million unemployed among their number are not suffering enough.

One reads letters from Labour supporters giving the impression that all will be well if we get Labour back into government.

Yet Labour was in government for 13 years.

Labour could have passed a law allowing victims such as the Touts, who, after all, had paid their rent on time. to remain in their house if their landlord defaulted. Labour didn’t.

Labour could have spent the money now in landlords’ pockets to build social housing. They didn’t.

Why should working people ever trust Labour again?

PETER NIELSEN
Worcester