A Sky News presenter has apologised after turning an interview about housing policy into an extraordinary rant about her tenants.
Jayne Secker, who has been a director of a registered property company, told housing campaigner Kirsty Archer “it was not the landlord’s fault” that an average of £2,000 was required in fees and deposit to rent a property in London.
“That’s just the housing market isn’t it and the landlord would have the same issues if you decided to move out,” Secker said, before launching into an unexpected diatribe about her own experiences as a property owner.
She continued: ″Some would say – and I am speaking as somebody who has rented flats [and] who also rents flats out – that especially with the younger generation in terms of renters you very often find that tenants don’t really know how to do a great deal in homes.”
Secker added: “I, for example, have had tenants complaining because lights have popped – because they don’t know how to change light bulbs. I’ve had tenants complaining about the heating – they haven’t turned the boiler on.
“It’s just very obvious things. If you lived in a home that you owned nobody would be able to fix these things for you. They are just things that actually often require a bit of common sense.”
Addressing her interview subject once more, Secker asked: ”Have you found amongst your friends that you perhaps aren’t equipped with all the necessary skills to rent?”
But Archer hit back: “That’s a bit patronising really, I mean, we weren’t complaining about things like a lightbulb.
“If a landlord was getting pissed off by that would be that surely the reasonable thing to do would be to communicate with each other and resolve that.
“Why should the consequence of that [be] hitting the eject button and turning [tenants’] lives upside down like that?”
Archer said later that she had not been told Secker was a landlord or that the former foreign correspondent would be using her business experience in the interview.
“I was not told beforehand that I would be interviewed by a landlady or had no idea how condescending and insensitive her line of question will be. Let’s get more working class people presenting news shows next,” Archer said.
Labour MP David Lammy said he was “shocked” by Secker’s “condescension and lack of humility”.
“Renting is not a choice. People need somewhere to live. The housing market - particularly in London - is broken. We need to re-balance the rules in favour of tenants,” he wrote on Twitter.
Broadcasting regulator Ofcom confirmed to HuffPost UK on Tuesday that it had received 15 complaints about the interview.
Secker said: “Clearly yesterday I got the tone and content of an interview wrong and it has upset many people. I am sure many of us will have made a mistake at work - unfortunate for me mine is a lot more public than most. Please be assured I have taken the many comments on board. Mea culpa.”
It came after new rules abolishing so-called “no-fault” evictions were announced by the government.