Member

The core issue is one of fairness. Rural tenants are no different from urban tenants. It just so happens that they have grown up in a particular village; their parents may have been working on the farm or the dairy, and that is where they are now. That is where they want to form their lives. That is where they have their networks. That is where they want to live. If it so happened that they were living a matter of 10 or 20 miles away, or in a major town, there would not be any question about whether they could buy into the security not just of tenure but of the opportunity to own a home. From my perspective, as I have said, this is really an issue of fairness. Denying people in the countryside the same rights that other people have is genuinely unfair.