An eminent Swedish economist, Assar Lindbeck, once said: “In many cases rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city—except for bombing.”

It has to be said that cities such as New York have not been levelled by rent controls; however this is because two forms of housing ownership evolved to tackle rent control – cooperative housing and condominiums.

Eric Pickles, the Communities Secretary before the General Election, used Lindbeck’s quote when he tweeted: “Rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city except for bombing.”

As previously covered, even Generation Rent agrees that rent controls would be a huge mistake and responsible for seeing families having to survive on the streets.

The group says that Labour’s promises of enforcing these measures would make “very little difference” and has some “pretty scary” loopholes which could be to the detriment of vulnerable people.

The Labour leader Miliband has often said that the UK is one of very few nations that allows short term tenancies one of one year : “We have families who don’t know from one day to the next whether they’re going to be kicked out of their home or rents will be jacked up.”

In an interview with  BBC Radio 4's the World at One, Osborne said Miliband’s policy is “economically illiterate… I don’t know what’s more terrifying, whether he believes they are going to work or knows they are not going to work but says it anyway.”

Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, said:

“What the Labour Party has said might sound superficially attractive, but I think it will be much less attractive to tenants across the country when they realise that in practice it will mean huge hikes in their rent every three years and probably fewer properties available to rent in the first place because more and more landlords will simply quit altogether.”