Many of us were saddened by Karen Buck’s announcement that she will be standing down as MP for Westminster North at the next election for personal reasons. Karen has been a huge voice for legal aid, social housing and on homelessness over the years. Her roles in the All-Party Parliamentary Groups on Legal Aid and on Temporary Accommodation are just the tip of her commitment to social welfare and legal aid. She is that rare creature: an MP who really understands housing and its importance, as well as what legal aid lawyers actually do.

But she certainly isn’t stepping down without a legacy.

First, as Karen is the most dedicated of constituency MPs, there are the thousands of people in her area whom she and her always energetic caseworkers have helped. Having seen some emails flying, I can only imagine the sense of impending doom felt by homeless officers, housing associations or the council’s arm’s-length management organisation as they arrived, knowing that they simply weren’t going to be let off the hook.

Second, Karen has long campaigned for licensing or planning permission to be required for Airbnb-style short lets of whole properties, armed with the horrifying statistics of the impact on her area and the removal of properties for longer-term rental. On 19 February 2024, the government announced that planning permission will be required for short lets. The landscape was changed.

And third, and closest to my heart, is the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018, Karen’s private members’ bill.

There is no space to go through all the rollercoasters of hope and despair, political wheeler-dealing and initiation into the arcana of parliamentary procedure that housing law barrister Justin Bates and I went through with Karen after the three of us came up with the bill (version 1) in 2015.

Having lost version 1 in 2015, thanks to Philip Davies MP talking it out (at which point it was probably a good thing there were no wax dolls and pins to hand), and then lost twice on Labour’s attempts to include it as an amendment to what became the Housing and Planning Act 2016, as the government whipped against it, I remember vividly Karen’s message when she came high in the ballot for private members’ bills once more in 2018: ‘Ready to do it again?’ Oh yes, we were, and with an improved version 2.

The moments of the bill passing third reading and of royal assent in December 2018 are etched in my memory, not least as Justin, Karen and I were in the odd position of hoping that the government wouldn’t fall quite yet, at least not until the bill was passed.

The Act’s lasting effects are still taking shape, as recorded in Legal Action, though it has already helped hundreds, if not thousands, of tenants. If Housing Act 1988 s21 is scrapped, and if – as Karen argued during the passage of the bill – legal aid is properly reinstated for housing conditions cases, private and social tenants will have a powerful tool to remedy poor housing conditions.

I am proud to call Karen a friend. She is always exasperated, but never defeated; always funny, particularly when exasperated; and never loses sight of the goal, while working out what tactical gains can be achieved in the meantime. That said, of course, her love of musicals is a character flaw, but we overlook that.

She has been the best of MPs: dedicated, knowledgeable, wise, committed and tireless. Both her constituency and the rest of us are the better for her and her work.

I should be absolutely clear that this is an appreciation, not an elegy; Karen may be standing down as an MP, but I am utterly certain that she will be back as a force for good and a champion of decent housing, legal aid and social welfare in one way or another in the near future. It is not in her nature not to be.