THE ghost of Thatcher still haunts social housing, Wales TUC delegates warned yesterday.

Calling for stricter regulation of private landlords, GMB regional secretary John Phillips said the arch-Tory’s sell-off of a million council houses in a bid to reduce the public sector still hurt today.

He pointed out that the amount paid to private landlords in housing benefits had risen by 51 per cent from 2008 to 2015.

“Landlords are the real beneficiaries of Britain’s welfare system,” he declared.

While extortionate rents were imposed on vulnerable tenants, “buy-to-let millionaires are capitalising on housing waiting lists.”

GMB had investigated the landlords making fortunes out of housing benefits, but some councils such as Vale of Glamorgan and Pembrokeshire had refused to supply details on privacy grounds.

However, it had been possible to identify wealthy company landlords throughout Wales profiting from housing benefit.

“The rich and powerful are sucking up housing benefits,” Mr Phillips declared.

GMB research showed that 45.6 per cent of Wales’s 184,254 private rented households qualified for housing benefit.

Unite delegate Danny Coleman warned that the situation would get worse, saying: “Margaret Thatcher’s right-to-buy brought massive cost to future generations.”

He said that immigrants were blamed by some for the shortage of housing but the problem lay with successive governments’ failure to build houses.

“The free market has failed miserably. We have the most expensive housing in western Europe.”

Terry Renshaw of construction union Ucatt called for a massive housebuilding programme.

He explained that when people move into new accommodation, they buy furniture, carpets and white goods and this would help to kick-start the economy.

“The Westminster government talks about affordable housing. We talk about affordable rented housing.

“This would get building workers back to work and put people into good-quality homes.”

Conference backed the call for greater transparency and disclosure of the ultimate recipients of housing benefits, robust regulation of the private rented sector and a national landlord registration scheme.