We thought this was an interesting comment on a proposed bill:

This coming Friday, 19 January, a bill is to be debated in parliament that could hugely improve the lives of many people in England.

The Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Bill would give private and social tenants the ability to take landlords to court if their home is unsafe. Over a millionhomes are thought to pose a serious threat to the health or safety of the people living there. This classification, also known as a “category 1 hazard”, covers 795,000 private tenancies – one in six of the privately rented homes in the country.

Ooooh, private landlords! How terrible they are. Why not use the righteous anger of the people against them? 

But then we get:

Although there are fewer of them, social tenants with an unsafe home currently have even less recourse, particularly where the landlord and the council are one and the same, as became tragically apparent following the Grenfell Tower fire last June.

Ah. 

So, we've those dastards in the private sector, facing competition plus independent (of them at least) enforcement of standards. We've then got the governmental (and quasi-such) sector with a monopoly supplier, no independent enforcement and thus consumers have even fewer rights and methods of gaining them.

Thus we must change the law. 

OK, the basic idea seems fair enough to us. Yes, that governmental supply should indeed be subject to the same consumer protections as the market sector. In fact, shouldn't this be true of the entire economy?