Scotland Yard Begins Inquiries

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30191, 24 July 1963, Page 15

Scotland Yard Begins Inquiries

(A-Z. Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, July 23. A team of Scotland Yard men began investigations yesterday into violence against tenants in London slum areas,’ the ‘‘Daily Express” reported. The detectives had been ordered to compile a dossier on their inquiries, the newspaper said.

Yesterday's Parliamentary debate on property profiteering provoked lively comment in today's British newspapers. The "Guardian” said the debate “for all its sound and fury, was well worth while. It has made virtually certain such revision of the law on rented housing as will sweep away the legal jungle in the shadows of which the rent racketeers carried on their predations: and it should spur such local authorities as are concerned to a more vigorous use of what powers they now have." The “Daily Express" criticised the attack on the Government by the Leader of the Opposition <Mr ’Wilson)

and said: "It is the shortage of houses and not the decontrol of rents which opens the way to the thug, the racketeer, and the swindler."

The “Daily Telegraph" said: “Under the hail of irrelevancies from the Opposition front bench, sympathies automatically move in favour of the Minister (of Housing), who, Rachman or no Rachman, is undoubtedly getting on with the job. “But his predecessors have left him too much to do." In an editorial headlineo ‘Keep ina landlordism clean.” the “Financial Times" de Jared ‘The Rachman affair will have served its purpose if it forces those concerned with protecting tenants to act more responsibly than they have done to date."