The Guardian view on tenants’ rights: the Tories have betrayed renters | Editorial

More than four years ago, the 2019 Conservative manifesto pledged to abolish no-fault evictions in England, in an effort to make tenancies more secure and remove the right of private landlords to evict people from their homes at will. In the past few years, a huge campaigning effort went into ensuring that this commitment would be kept. Last week, it became clear that it wouldn’t be. Jacob Young, a minister in Michael Gove’s levelling up department, revealed in a letter to Tory MPs that the government plans to amend the bill now making its way through parliament. The promised ban on no-fault evictions (also known as section 21 notices) will not be enacted until “the courts are ready” – at some unspecified future date.

This capitulation to landlords, dressed up as a reasonable compromise, is in reality a disgraceful betrayal. The renters reform bill has cross-party support. Ministers would have had no difficulty getting it through the House of Commons with the evictions ban intact – even if some of their own MPs, including a group involved in lobbying to water down the bill who are themselves landlords, had rebelled. Polling shows that the public recognises the severity of Britain’s housing affordability crisis, and particularly its impact on younger people’s lives. Putting the interests of landlords before those of renters is a political choice.

Changing the law so that tenants cannot simply be ejected at a moment of their landlord’s choosing, with just a few weeks’ notice, would not solve all Britain’s housing problems. As Nick Bano argues in a new book, the regulation of the private rental sector is weak overall, and a key reason why housing costs continue to rise much faster than renters’ incomes. In Scotland, where there is an energetic tenants’ rights movement, temporary rent caps were introduced along with an evictions ban in 2022. There are concerns that the temporary legislation’s imminent expiry will be followed by big rent hikes and evictions. Last week, the Scottish government published a bill that aims to make such controls permanent, though Shelter Scotland has questioned whether the new duties it proposes to impose on councils are realistic.

But while ending section 21 in England is not a panacea, and reform of the housing system will be a lengthy process, it is a necessary first step to making the lives of private renters more secure and reducing the likelihood of homelessness. Home ownership rates have been falling since the early 2000s, while social housebuilding has not kept up with need. Millions of people who would prefer to be owner-occupiers, or to rent from councils or other social providers, now have no option other than to rent privately from one of Britain’s 2.5 million landlords. This chronically insecure form of tenure is particularly unsuited to families with children in schools, or those struggling with poor health.

Even before last week’s climbdown, the bill had been altered in landlords’ favour. It does nothing to regulate rent increases, although an ombudsman will eventually have the task of adjudicating in cases where tenants claim rises are being used to push them out. Unless ministers change their minds again, it will fall to Labour and other opposition parties to pledge to enact the legislation, without delay, in their manifestos.

Rishi Sunak’s government had the chance to claim renters’ rights as a legacy. Instead, it has chosen cowardly deferral.