Gove Says No-fault Evictions Will Be Banned Before General Election

The minister said courts will be resourced to enforce the ban. It comes after he warned young people who can’t access housing may turn to authoritarian leaders.

Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Michael Gove, speaks outside BBC Broadcasting House in London on Feb. 11, 2024. Lucy North/PA Wire

No-fault evictions will be banned before the next general election, House Secretary Michael Gove promised on Sunday.

Mr. Gove said the government “will have ended” the practice and given resources to the courts to enforce the ban by the time.

The housing secretary said that he’s “doing everything” to lobby Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt for more money in housing in the spring budget.

It comes after Mr. Gove warned that young people may turn to authoritarianism if they are shut out of the housing market.

No-fault evictions have “got to go,” Mr. Gove told The Times of London, the newspaper said on Saturday.

Asked whether the practice will be banned before the general election later this year, he told the BBC “Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday” programme that the Renters Reform Bill “ends section 21” no-fault evictions.

Under current law in England, a landlord can seek to evict a tenant by issuing a Section 8 notice when a tenant has broken the terms of the tenancy, or a Section 21 notice if no terms are broken.

The government has said the new bill will abolish section 21 evictions and deliver a simpler, more secure tenancy structure by measures including ending fixed-term tenancies.

The government also promised the bill would protect landlords’ rights to sell or move into their property if needed, or to raise rents to market value, but critics have warned that the ban will force many landlords to sell.

The bill is currently being examined in the House of Commons and is yet to go through the House of Lords.

Commenting on Mr. Gove’s promise, Tom Darling, campaign manager at the Renters’ Reform Coalition said he’s “sceptical” that it can be delivered.

The guarantee says “not only will the Renters Reform Bill be passed before the general election, but that the abolition Section 21 will have come into force!” he wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

He said he’s “sceptical” the “punchy” promise can be delivered, adding that campaigners will “hold him to it.”

In a statement, he said, “We will hold the government to this commitment.

“We'll also be making sure the government don’t give in to landlord attempts to gut the bill—if these evictions are banned in name only then the government won’t be getting a pat on the back from anyone.”

In the same interview, Mr. Gove said he can’t promise to reduce the number of people in temporary accommodation, blaming “significant” pressure on housing.

Asked whether it is acceptable to have so many people in temporary housing in one of the world’s richest countries, he said: “No, it’s not. And that’s why we’re taking action.”

According to charity Shelter’s analysis, there were almost 310,000 people in some form of homelessness on any given night in 2023, and most of them were in temporary accommodation.

Mr. Gove said he’s “doing everything” he can, “short of laying siege to his own home,” to persuade the chancellor to put more money into housing.

“Every day I send him a note or a message emphasising the importance of doing more to unlock housing supply,” he said, adding that Mr. Hunt “absolutely appreciates the importance of supporting the next generation.”

Gove: Young People May Turn to ‘Authoritarian Leader’

In an interview with The Times of London, the housing secretary warned that young people who are not able to access the housing market may lose faith in democracy.

“It’s a barrier to young people feeling that democracy and capitalism are working for them,” he said. “It’s simply harder for us to make that case if people who’ve got broadly small ‘c’ conservative values, or actually no particular political agenda at all, feel that they’re being shut out,” he told the newspaper.

“If people think that markets are rigged and a democracy isn’t listening to them, then you get—and this is the worrying thing to me—an increasing number of young people saying, ‘I don’t believe in democracy, I don’t believe in markets,’” he asserted.

“And you can see that in polling, with people saying, ‘I just want someone to fix this. I’d be prepared to have an authoritarian leader who would just fix this,’ and that is a danger.”

PA Media contributed to this report.