CAMPAIGNERS have taken their calls for permanent controls on Scotland’s spiralling rents to the doorstep of the First Minister’s rent-free residence.

Just weeks after John Swinney took up his grace-and-favour home at Bute House in Edinburgh’s historic New Town, protesters from Scotland’s leading tenants’ union Living Rent have urged him to take action to halt crippling rent increases across the country that have seen Scottish rents rocket by 62 per cent over the last decade.

In Glasgow — where rents have grown by a fifth in a year and almost doubled in a decade — members from across the city rallied in Govan at the statue to Mary Barbour, one of the leaders of the 1915 rent-strikes movement which won controls in place until scrapped by Margaret Thatcher in 1988.