Which Government do you mean?
Labour? Conservative, Lib Dem, Greens, SNP? All Governments are in part responsible for the creation of this mess by not having enough working people's money invested in building council houses, and the maintenance burden they all represent (the queue for tax payers money behind ageing water, gas, energy, NHS etc etc) The lack of Government enthusiasm and bright ideas was to push every service provision onto private ownership to save money. Then recognising there could be a major homelessness crisis with no solution created well meaning legislation to prevent the removal of non paying tenants. We should not be surprised at the outcome of rents rising.
Governments in office since the 1960's have chosen not to build and maintain low rent council housing. Governments have cynically preferred to pass responsibility of social housing to private landlords - because the whole country has been and still is in debt and does not have the means, the will or money to build more council housing.
Rapidly rising populations. Supply and demand have pushed both house purchase and rental prices up. Some of this was a lack of control on foreign buyers prospecting. Too many people, losing their own homes on top of the rising population are now chasing too few rental homes. House prices have gone through the roof, so too have rental costs.
Evicting a tenant is now difficult and expensive. Every tenant now knows this and it is an easy option not to pay rent. When they are finally evicted they land on the local authority doorstep - homeless. Eviction legal costs, management costs and lost rental income create a massive loss of income for a private landlord. Who would want to be a private landlord where additional home taxes, licences, maintenance costs and no hope of getting defaulted rent payments back make renting as house a very risky proposition. Now we have a looming crisis with the population growing and no adequate infrastructure and no means to do anything to relieve this.
Your statement is too simplistic.