Paula Barker, Labour MP for Liverpool Wavertree, is the latest opposition member of parliament to ask for immediate action on banning Section 21 evictions.

She has told MPs: “The emerging picture is clear. Section 21 evictions are going up. We saw a 26 per cent increase during the first quarter of this year. 

“We are now three years down the track from the publication of the 2019 Conservative manifesto promising to end section 21. I note that the Minister has committed … to ending section 21 in this Parliament, but may I push further and urge the Department to commit to bringing forward emergency legislation early in the new year to end this scandal, working with the Opposition to do so? 

“Will those on the Government Benches accept that, through their inaction, the Department is leaving tenants vulnerable to eviction in the meantime?”

Her intervention – in a question and answer session with junior housing minister Felicity Buchan – received the standard response that the government was committed to scrapping Section 21 at the earliest opportunity, although no date was given to suggest when this would be.

Barker’s question came shortly before new statistics from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities showing 5,940 households in England were issued with a Section 21 eviction in the three months to the end of June. 

This is lower than the previous quarter’s 6,400 households, but an increase on the same period in 2021 when 3,380 notices were issued. The rise partly reflects the end of an eviction ban in spring 2021.

The latest DLUHC data also reveals 33,570 households assessed as being “threatened with homelessness” – a quarter were said to be because of the loss of a private tenancy.