Scottish Labour will table plans at Holyrood to implement rent controls in a bid to limit housing costs, the party's leader will announce on Saturday.

Richard Leonard will also tell delegates at his party's conference in Dundee that if elected as First Minister his administration would carry out a council house building programme.

It is his first conference since he was elected as to the office in November last year.

The cost of renting a two bedroom property has risen by an average of 33.7% in the Lothians since 2010 and by 32.1%, according to Scottish Government data.

Leonard said the legislation used to restrict rental prices would be named after Mary Barbour, a pioneering Labour figure who organised a rent strike in Glasgow during the First World War in protest at soaring housing costs.

Under the proposals, a national board of assessors would set maximum rental prices based on things such as the quality of the property's insulation and heating.

It is hopped this would stop landlords charging high costs for poor quality flats purely based of their locations.

"I can announce today that in parliament we have begun the work to introduce a new Rent Restrictions Act-a Mary Barbour law to protect tenants and to control rents exactly as I pledged to do in my leadership campaign," Leonard is expected to say.

"The Mary Barbour law will regulate the private rented sector to ensure that no one is forced to rent a home that pushes them into poverty or falls below the standards needed to protect their physical and mental health and wellbeing."

A council house building programme would also be launched under the plans, partly funded by investment from local government pension funds.

He is expected to say: "So let me be clear, under a future Scottish Labour government we will start building council houses again.

"Building more public homes, tackling rip-off rents and agency fees will create better homes for bringing up our children.

"It will reduce the cost-pressures of housing, and it will provide a supply of sheltered housing too which will be in growing demand with our ageing population."