HOUSING Secretary Sajid Javid’s declared backing for Karen Buck’s private member’s Bill to empower tenants to sue landlords for failing to keep homes fit for human habitation could be an important step forward.

It would mark a major U-turn by the Tories who previously scuppered two attempts by the Labour backbencher to achieve this reform.

Buck’s first bid to amend the 1985 Landlord and Tenant Act to require residential rented accommodation to be “provided and maintained in a state of fitness for human habitation” was talked out by Tory MPs in 2015.