John Healey MP, Labour’s Shadow Housing Secretary, responding to the release of the Government amendment to the Coronavirus Bill on renters, said:

“With this legislation, Boris Johnson has broken his promise to the country’s 20 million renters.

“This is not an evictions ban, as Labour argued for, and renters were eventually promised by Boris Johnson. This legislation does not stop people losing their homes as a result of coronavirus, it just gives them some extra time to pack their bags.

“It beggars belief that the Government is not willing to make this simple change. We even wrote to Ministers to give them the legislation that would provide the protections renters need: to ban evictions and suspend rental payments beyond the crisis. This is the help already promised for struggling home-owners from Government and mortgage lenders.

“Coronavirus is a public health emergency, it need not become a crisis of housing and homelessness too. But this will happen if the Government continues to refuse to take the most basic steps to keep people in their homes.”