Did the homelessness minister evict her own tenants for profit?

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0:50That is Roshanara Ali, the Labour MP for Bethnal Green, speaking in the House of Commons about the scourge of eviction. As well she might, because since the election she's been the homelessness minister. Now, you probably agree with what she said. Short-term tenancies, the instability they cause, the anxiety they can induce with that dreaded phone call you can get from a landlord saying that you have to get out of your home and soon, through no fault of your own. Well, here's the thing. It turns out that Roshanar Ali is not just the Minister for Homelessness, but a landlord for two properties.

1:25And not only that, she's accused as a housing minister of, well, taking away someone's house, potentially in a way which could soon be illegal under changes her government, her department, is about to introduce. It's not completely ideal, is it? Welcome to the News Agents.

1:51The News Agents. Right, you may have heard a flurry of news in the last 24 hours about a potential face-to-face meeting between Presidents Trump and Putin on Ukraine, notably perhaps not including President Zelensky. Yes, I know we've been here before, but it feels like maybe, maybe it might just be different this time and we will get to that story. But first, as I say, Roshanara Ali is now facing calls to resign following the story that one of her previous tenants has gone to a newspaper with their story that their tenancy was brought to an end by Ali, that the house in London would be sold, they were told.

2:26And that's the reason the tenancy had to come to an end, only to later discover that it hadn't been sold after all. And in the interim, the rent had gone up by an extra£700. Well, we're joined now in our own newsagent's little abode by Victoria Spratt, housing correspondent for The Eye, who broke the story, and Aggie Chombray, of course, friend of the show. Not that you're not a friend of the show, Victoria. Thanks so much. Both friends of the show. Aggie Chombray, LBC political correspondent, is also here. Vicky, just give us the outline of the story. Well, for anybody who hasn't heard by now about this story, what has happened is that four tenants from an East London townhouse contacted me to say that they were asked to leave their property because it was being sold.

3:08They then found out that their landlord was Labour's homelessness minister, Rishnara Ali. So they thought that that was a story that ought to be on the record because under Labour's New Renters' Rights Act, which will become law early next year, landlords will not be allowed to put properties back up for rent if they have said tenants have to leave because they are selling them. And what happened in this case is that after the tenants left, they saw the property was relisted very quickly for nearly£700 more a month. And when you say very quickly, are we talking months? Are we talking weeks? They say within weeks.

3:47That's disputed by the minister. Either way, it's not a sort of like year period or six month period. It certainly wouldn't be allowed within the confines of this new legislation. It would be prohibited under Labour's forthcoming legislation and we at the iPaper sent a reporter one of my brilliant colleagues Alex to knock on the door yesterday to confirm this because the minister had pushed back on it the tenants said they had been living there for four or five months the tenants who contacted me left in March so the point of this is is that to say that I mean obviously big picture whatever the details a story which is homelessness minister evicts their own tenants not ideal but even worse is that in evicting them in the way that she has, it would in fact be illegal under the government's own legislation which is coming in, which would mean that basically the obvious question is, well, something's wrong here, right?

4:36It's either her conduct or the legislation itself. Well, or there is a third party involved. Of course, the property was managed by letting agents. But it's her responsibility ultimately. Ultimately as the landlord, yeah. So something has clearly gone very wrong. I would say the minister disputes that these tenants were evicted. they were told the house was being sold and she says that she offered for them to stay on a rolling basis they say they asked they asked for yeah that they asked that they weren't offered so the minister's recollection of events differs somewhat from the tenants but either way even a rolling basis obviously offers very little in the way of security because the house could be sold at any time and the minister doesn't think she evicted them but i would say if you're asked to leave is that an eviction you know if you're asked to leave a school are you expelled or have you just been asked to leave what's what's the difference it feels like semantics we should talk about the politics of it but just because people might not be familiar with the bill that's that's that's coming in the labour's renters rights bill what are the provisions of it and what particular provisions would she have if that was in place now because it's coming in what do you believe she may have broken if that law was extant at the moment so let's be clear it's a really good piece of legislation.

5:47I think lots of people are very happy that it's coming through. Housing Minister Matthew Pennecook has worked very, very hard on the renters' rights bill. And you spent years writing about these issues and campaigning on them. Yeah, absolutely. And I've spoken to absolutely everybody that I could possibly speak to. I think the general consensus is the renters' rights bill is a very, very important piece of legislation. We have got nearly 5 million households renting privately in this country. That's double what we had when Labour were last in power. We're talking about a huge group of people who just do not have the protections that they need to stay in their homes.

6:16The key thing that this bill will do is ban what's called a section 21 no-fault eviction, which is where you can pretty much be evicted at any time in a tenancy without having done anything wrong. But it will also make it harder for landlords to throw people out if they're selling up. And if they are going to sell, they are allowed to take the property back. But the reason this provision exists where you cannot relist it for rent within six months is to close a loophole where they could say, oh, I've got to sell it, ask the tenants to leave, and then put the rent up. And the suspicion is, or it could be said, that there would be at least a suspicion that that is what the minister may have done here.

6:54Look, the property was listed for sale until this morning when it seems to have been taken down. So it certainly, she has been trying to sell it. It has been listed for sale. It was up for nearly a million, then it was reduced earlier this year. So she certainly has been trying to sell it. But nonetheless, the fact remains, the tenancy agreement I saw from the tenants who who left earlier this year were evicted left however you want to put it were paying three thousand three hundred pounds a month it then went up to nearly four thousand pounds a month when it was relet yeah Aggie what number 10 saying about this well so you've touched on it there Vicky it's really difficult isn't it when two people are saying slightly different things and also the crux of the story as you very much have said is also the fact that what she seems to have done would have been illegal in a bill that's coming forward early next year in the sense that if a landlord ends a tenancy and regains possession they're banned from re-letting marketing for letting or granting any occupancy license for restricted period of 12 months but the trouble is and this is the point that has been made by mclg by the department too is if they are saying that they were on a fixed-term contract and then the fixed term contract ended and then they offered them this rolling contract which the people you have spoken to deny but then isn't it the point as well that a fixed term contract is also going to become illegal under the renter's right bill absolutely we won't have fixed term contracts anymore so it'll all be illegal yeah everything she's done but i mean let's just be fair to the minister for a moment fixed term contracts are the norm they've been the norm since the 1988 housing act she's not done anything wrong by having a fixed term contract but i think this case highlights the instability of those contracts and how they can make it very easy for landlords to have flexibility to put rents up okay so like what i think what we can agree right what we could say is that clearly there is this clear legal question about what would have happened if this had happened in the future when this is coming but politically right i mean this is a very crude way of putting it it's not completely true but nonetheless homelessness minister makes people homeless or at the very least ask people leave you know it's not ideal is it i mean it's not completely idea what's what's your sense of what Labour MPs think about it no it's not ideal and also of course as Vicky will know she has spoken on the record numerous times as homelessness minister about how how important it is that people don't become homeless how private renters can be it can be really really difficult and Labour slammed a lot of Tory MPs who are many of whom there are far more by to let landlords among on the Tory benches certainly in the last parliament than there are Labour it's more typical with Tory and they you know rightly when occasionally these stories come along which exposes an MP as, I'm not saying this was the case in this case, a slum landlord, but you know, who'd been a bad landlord in whatever way, they absolutely rightly slam them.

9:32And when you've got a homelessness minister, I'm almost surprised she was made a minister in that department given she had buy-to-let obligations. Two buy-to-lets, by the way, two rental properties according to the register of interest. So that is something that came up again and again when I spoke to Labour MPs earlier today about this story, the fact that it is obviously more unusual statistically for a Labour MP to own a number of houses let alone a number of buy to let houses that they are then renting out and i think that for the labour mps i spoke to at least that makes them slightly uncomfortable and then there's vicky's story itself and i mean i'm just going to read out some quotes these are labour mps who have read the story read vicky's story thought about it and responded the first words says this labour mp that came into my head were toast it just reads as massively bad form most Labour MPs are going to look very very unfavourably on this and then there are the questions from this Labour MP about whether or not she will be inevitably shifted out after this so questions about whether she potentially might lose her brief or whether there is everybody expects going to be a reshuffle of more junior ministers at some point potentially in the next month or so questions about whether she will go in that or whether she might go before that from the conversations I've had kind of from the government side it doesn't sound like it another The Labour MP says, very, very bad.

10:47Not sure how stable her position is. Difficult to see how she survives, TBH, especially she's already had most of her brief taken off her. That, as you may know, will be a reference to the fact that she used to be a Grenfell minister. She went along to a conference last year, and this was part of her brief in the job she's in now. She went along to a conference. It was at the Franco-British conference that brings together senior politicians, civil servants, and business leaders. and the person that co-hosted, co-chaired that conference recently served as chairman of San Gobam, the parent company of one of the firms that was heavily criticised in the recent Grenfell inquiry.

11:22So she went along to that and then campaigners from Grenfell called for her to lose that brief, which she then did. So Labour MPs, I mean, pretty consistently, a couple of them that I phoned up said, I don't want to talk about this because I don't know all the details. Everyone else I spoke to thought she would go. Potentially not now, but potentially in the next reshuffle. And they also said what might help her is the fact that it's August. So not everybody is talking about this in PCH, although said any WhatsApp group with fewer than 10 Labour MPs in it, they are talking about this. And the stories have called up for it to go, of course.

11:53But not just, I mean, you would expect that, but I know as well, there are Labour, I mean, you've spoken to a load, it sounds like, of Labour MPs talking off the record, but there are Labour MPs talking about it publicly, right? Kim Johnson, left-wing Labour MP, has criticised it. Other people in the Labour Party, Jess Barnard, who's a member of Labour's National Executive Committee, says, seems an appropriate time to reiterate that MPs should not be landlords and landlords should not be Labour MPs. You could argue that's quite an extreme position, but I think, again, highlights that this would be, doubtless, if this were a Tory government and a Tory minister, it would be a problem.

12:25But there is something, for Labour MPs in the Labour Party, it just sits so congenitally, it's kind of uncomfortably, right? Even the idea of being a party to a landlord, not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that, but it just sits with great difficulty. And as I say, I'm amazed they managed to find like the one, I mean, there can't be that many Labour MPs with certainly more than one buy-to-let property, and yet they managed to find one of them and make them a housing minister. I suppose it's important to point out that she is not the minister with responsibility for renting. That is Matthew Pennycook.

12:54But nonetheless, she's at the department responsible for this huge shift in rebalancing the power between renters and landlords. Such a huge shift, may I point out, that it could not get through under the Conservatives because it was so contentious amongst their backbenchers, many of whom are landlords. So Labour promised, they promised to come in, get this through without any controversy. They've done that. But this is just a terrible look. It's one of those things that the government has done. And I can think of a few examples of this, which are way more radical and way more significant than perhaps A, they get credit for or be that we discuss very often right because you know it's often obviously a common critique of the government that they are you know they're directionless they're rudderless they don't really talk about what they're doing you know this is you say vicky it's a substantial transfer of political power ultimately from people with property to people without property something that has been called for for years and years and years is the renting crisis and whatever has got worse and worse and yet you have this which basically it's the thing that's getting attention but it also sort of undermines that profoundly big shift.

14:03Well, I think that's really key, Lewis. And actually, stakeholders, including ACORN, the National Tenants Union, the Renters Reform Coalition, which is a group including Generation Rents, Shelter, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, really important people that MHCLG has had at the table during all of the discussions about this legislation. ACORN are calling for her to resign. The Renters Reform Coalition, who are normally a lot more measured, said this just undermines the point of the whole bill. and I think you've got a situation where actually renters do feel really hard done by they feel really insecure they've been ignored politically for a really long time and let's let's not lose sight of what has actually happened here regardless of the semantics whether you call it an eviction or not four people moved into a house that they were paying a significant amount of money for they thought they would be in it for a long time they made a home less than a year into that tenancy they were told it would be sold from under them and they should leave that's what has happened here and that's why there is so much resentment i think towards landlords politically and culturally so the optics of this are just very bad sorry i was just gonna say because i think because i think we've kind of all touched on it is this one of those cases where the optics are really bad it looks really bad i've spoken to loads of labour mps today who says she's toast this is really really terrible but the point that the department makes is it's in line with the law would it be this bad if the renters rights bill wasn't coming in or would it just look bad if the renters rights bill wasn't coming in i think you'd still have people saying it was very bad but i mean we've got to work with the reality we have which is this legislation is coming in it's coming from her department and also you could look at it the other way right looking at it from the you just mentioned various renters associations and interest groups if you were a landlord group or a landlord and you're sat there going you've built up a business or whatever on the basis of this legislation which exists and then the government is making as you say a really radical change to the legislative framework and the way that operates the way your business operates on the basis of a moral case you know that this is the right thing to do because there's been too much power for people like you and not enough power for these people and then you see one of the ministers who on some level is responsible for that albeit it's not directly her brief but nonetheless she's in the department basically doing the thing arguably that you're being told you ought not to do and then that's bad for you to do then you'd be pretty pissed off as well right well i note that landlords have been very very very quiet my phone has been absolutely blowing up today i've not been hearing from any landlord associations and normally they're very quick to get in touch and i think they don't want to say anything well they've worked very hard with angela reina with matthew pennycook on this legislation they want to stay in the room i'd imagine it's very very difficult because it looks like a case of do as we say, not as we do.

16:49And I would point out, you know, she's not the minister responsible for renting. That's true. She is the minister responsible for homelessness. An eviction, as the government themselves have said, quoting Shelter, the housing charity, is a leading cause of homelessness. The end of a private tenancy is a leading cause of homelessness. Define homelessness. I speak to people week in, week out, who in very similar circumstances to these four people have to leave a privately rented home and cannot find anything else they can afford. Where do they end up? Knocking on the door of their local authority, asking for support, moving back in with parents, moving in with friends, sofa surfing.

17:26There is a direct link between what has happened here and people becoming homeless. It is a clear link. As anyone who's had a tendency of that nature knows and who has been told that it's coming to an end in these sorts of circumstances, is even if you are a person of means when you're told that and you know you have a relatively limited length of time to find somewhere else with the rental market being as we all know what it is particularly in cities like london the fear at least of homelessness they're like well what happens if i can't find somewhere by x date and this is there right right and i should say also you know i've spoken to one of the tenants in this group of people three of them don't want to talk about it because they're so worried about all of the attention it's getting And they might not be able to get another home.

18:12Well, quite. It would be very difficult to rent. The other one who I have spoken to, Laura, I don't think she took any pleasure in this at all. I think she thought about it for a really long time. She just felt the hypocrisy. And then got in touch because she told me, she said, I voted Labour for change and this is wrong. Obviously you pointed out that obviously with the legislation coming in, there is going to be change. Yeah, but it doesn't change her situation now, does it? She had to move. When did she find out that Rushnara Ali was an MP and was her landlord? I think they started googling the name on their contract once they were told they were going to have to leave, which was about eight months into their tenancy.

18:47I mean, that must have been quite a moment. Well, there was something else that happened too, which is in the story that I wrote for the iPaper, which is they knew that, I think, before they were then told by the agency they were going to be charged nearly£2 ,000 to repaint the house. And then they showed me the checkout report. I've been through it with a fine tooth comb. The pictures that say that it required repainting show some cobwebs, a couple of spiders, tiny mark on the wall. They were going to charge them£2 ,000. Yeah. Which itself, right, is going to be made illegal under the legislation.

19:16That's already illegal. That's already illegal. Under the Tenant Fees Act 2019, Lewis, what happened was they disputed it because wear and tear you're not allowed to charge tenants for. So that's a scuff here and there, paint fading, dust. But what you can charge is serious damage. so what happened here clearly is they were alleging that serious damage had occurred to the extent that it needed repainting to the tune of I think it was one you know nearly nearly two thousand pounds just shy and the pictures clearly don't show that they knew that Roshanar Ali was their landlord they emailed the agency they said look the homelessness minister is our landlord she's a Labour MP perhaps you shouldn't do this or we will go to the press in the tenant's words The charges then mysteriously disappeared.

19:57But I understand from people close to Roshanara Ali that what happened is that she was then told about it. She didn't know about it up until that point. And she intervened so the charges would be cancelled. Well, we should say that we have approached Roshanara Ali for an interview. I'm sure you've done the same thing. And she has declined. But there is always a space open. There's always an availability for a tenant's agreement of our own and to bring Roshanara Ali into this studio. And we can ask her about it. Vicky, you probably want to answer this because you're going to be too virtuous. But, Aga, do you think she survived?

20:28I think from the conversations I've had today, not with people in government, but with Labour MPs, she probably survives until the reshuffle. And I wonder whether she doesn't survive beyond that reshuffle. But that could happen any minute now, but probably in September. Well done for resisting the temptation to say she's going to be evicted from the government, which I, unfortunately, was not able to do. Victoria? You cannot resist a pun, Lewis. It's not really a pun. It's more of a pathetic wordplay. Technically, I suppose. I mean, I would say, actually, not too virtuous to answer this at all, when you've got a government department, Ministry of Housing, which is actually, I would argue, one of the most functional departments in this government, actually delivering on stuff that they said they would do.

21:07Planning reform. Again, the Tories couldn't make that happen. Renters reform, the Tories couldn't make that happen. Have an abolished leasehold yet, haven't they? No, but they're working on that. And in fairness to them, legally, that is a disaster and they are on it. I think you've got a department that's actually getting the job done. They don't cause a fuss. They do lots of great work that doesn't make headlines because stories like this tend to make more headlines. So having somebody at that department who is doing things that will be in direct contravention of their legislation means she probably should go.

21:38I guess the only counterpoint to that is if she is one of the cogs in the machine that is making that department work well and is doing stuff behind the scenes, maybe they think, well, we don't hear about it loads, maybe we just can't lose her. Of course we don't know. And I would love to hear those stories. If they want to get in touch and share some of those good news stories with me, I'll absolutely take a look. I'm sure they'll be taking you up on that, having heard this, without a doubt. Vicky, thanks so much for coming in. We'll be back with more from Aggie, where she and I will be talking about, and I never thought I'd say this, Kemi Badenock and Joseph Fritzl.

22:06Stay with us.

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23:17This is The News Agents. Before we get to, yes, I'll say it again, Kemi Badenock and Joseph Fritzl are the more important matters. It is possible, just possible, that within a week we may be looking at the first face-to-face meeting of an American president with Vladimir Putin since their full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The Kremlin is saying that a meeting with Trump and Putin could happen within days. It might actually happen this time. Here is Trump in the Oval Office last night saying the same, or hinting at the same at least. We had some very good talks with President Putin today, and there's a very good chance that we could be ending the round, ending the end of that road.

23:58That road was long and continues to be long, but there's a good chance that there will be a meeting very soon. Well, we turn now, as we often do on these occasions, to Mark Urban, who is, of course, co-host of the Crisis Room podcast, which I very much recommend you listen to if you don't already. Mark, thanks so much for joining us, particularly from your holiday in the Spanish mountains. So we're particularly grateful to you. Are you surprised that this seems to be happening so quickly, so rapidly, with the Kremlin saying today that it could be within the coming days? I'm a little surprised, but let's face it, it hasn't actually happened yet.

24:30So we have been marched up this hill once or twice before. For example, when negotiators went to Saudi Arabia in February, there was this idea that Trump might be flying in to join them, and so would Putin in Saudi Arabia. And interestingly, now people are speculating about the United Arab Emirates as being the possible location for this meeting. And I think it was reckoned when they tried to do this back in February that people just basically weren't ready. The two sides were too far apart. The Ukrainians had turned up and a Russian delegation had turned up in Saudi Arabia and they couldn't get it close enough.

25:07And then I think the word was to Trump, no, there's not going to be a handshake moment. Keep your distance. So I think the key question the next few days is, has this been better prepared? I mean, obviously, it's come out as a result of the visit of Stephen Wyckoff, Trump's negotiator to Moscow. You know, what's the nature of the discussions there? Have they got a good idea what they're doing? Have they got some kind of achievable wins pretty much lined up that the two leaders can come in and shake hands on? And then, of course, critically, is Zelensky going to be part of that or not. Now that seems to be another area where there's a lot of uncertainty.

25:45Putin has wanted this meeting for a long time, hasn't he, Mark? He sees a meeting with Trump as a way, a means of obtaining what he wants in Ukraine, as well as buying more time. Yes. Well, he's always, I mean, for example, in the months before the full-scale invasion happened in February 2022, the French, the Germans, various people went to Putin to try and stop him invading because it was pretty clear from the intelligence that that's what was being prepared. And even at that time, Putin had this sort of attitude about, well, I need to talk to the organ grinder kind of thing. And that's got to be the president of the United States.

26:24He's always wanted to, as it were, impose a deal over the heads of the Europeans and most critically, the Ukrainians. And so this idea that this could be clinched at a sort of face-to-face meeting between the two big bosses of the international system, as Putin would like to see it, has always appealed to him. But, you know, there's been a fair bit of commentary out of Moscow in the last few months that Putin's kind of lost hope a bit with Trump and finds him too unpredictable, which anyone who came to the conclusion that it was hard to predict which way Trump was going to go could be forgiven for doing so.

26:59So what have they nailed down and have they nailed it down? You know, I think there's still quite a few questions, Lewis. And Trump himself, I mean, you're talking about Putin's journey with Trump. Trump appears to have been as far as it is possible to chart because it remains quixotic. But general trajectory does seem to be one of increasing foie de towards Putin over time. And yet now we have news of this potential meeting. But, you know, if one thinks of what he's doing, for example, with India at the moment, imposing higher tariffs because they happen to be trading or buying Russian oil, The general direction has been one against Putin, hasn't it?

27:34Yes, and I think it is true as well. I mean, people are talking about Volodymyr Zelensky potentially being part of this meeting. Whether or not he is, it is evidently true that we haven't had any of the kind of public strong-arming that we had early in the year of Ukraine, that Ukraine appears to have done enough by entering into various agreements with the Americans, you know, over its minerals. and then there's the subsequent idea that NATO might pay for more of these American weapons going to Ukraine. That does seem to have been largely sorted. We're not seeing the kind of overt, coercive language that Trump used a little bit towards Zelensky in the start of his term.

28:16Is he really fed up with Putin? He has on a couple of occasions said, I mean, there was that extraordinary moment, wasn't there, in one of his press huddles, where he basically said that every time Putin says that he's going to do the right thing, Melania then tells him that she's seen awful pictures on the television of Russian missiles falling in large numbers across Ukraine. And Trump has more or less said, the guy's playing me for a fool. So the tone has changed. There are people speculating now about the possible form of deal and whether or not Zelensky would be at the table and saying, well, let's just wait to see.

28:57Putin seems to want some kind of ceasefire guaranteeing Russian territorial gains for many, many years. You know, is that part of what's all been worked out with Witkoff as part of the preparation for this? Is this functioning like normal high level summit diplomacy? Or is it all going to be a bit more off the wall again, with Trump coming to views sort of as he gets on the plane to go there? Very hard to read. But it's certainly a really interesting moment. I mean, Mark, has anything changed substantially from the months? We've been talking about something like this for months and months and months.