The government has insisted that its commitment to reform the courts process to help deal with evictions more effectively is not a delaying tactic to avoid the commitment to scrap Section 21.

Jacob Young, a junior minister at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, has told the committee of MPs scrutinising thew Renters Reform Bill that the legislation contains the “most significant reforms of the private rented sector in 30 years, and it is critical that we get them right.”

He insists he is as wedded to ensuring that section 21 is abolished at the earliest opportunity as anyone else, “but we have to get the system ready.”

He told MPs on the committee: “Court rules and systems need updating to reflect the new law; there is no way that this can be avoided. Furthermore, we have already fully committed to a digital system that will make the court process more efficient and fit for the modern age. Let me reassure the Committee that we are doing as much as possible before the legislative process concludes. 

“The design phase of our possession process digitisation project is under way, and has more than £1m of funding. That will pave the way for the development and build of a new digital service.

“We are also working to tackle concerns about bailiff delays, including by providing for automated payments for debtors. That will reduce the need for doorstep visits, so that bailiffs can prioritise possession enforcement. We are going further with the Ministry of Justice and His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service in exploring improvements to bailiff recruitment and retention policies; we touched on that. 

“It would simply be a waste of taxpayers’ money to spend millions of pounds building a new system when we do not have certainty on the legislation underpinning it. That is why we will set out more details and implementation dates in due course.”

And he concluded by saying that this was not a delaying tactic.

“There are 2.4m landlords. Urban and rural landlords, their representatives and business tell us that they have concerns about delays in the courts. We cannot simply ignore that. We have always been clear that implementation would be phased, so that the sector has time to adjust, and we committed to giving notice of the implementation dates in the White Paper last year.

“…Every one of the 11 million renters in this country has a landlord. We have had representations from all the organisations representing the 2.4m landlords in this country saying they are concerned about the courts. Trying to introduce a new system and overriding the concerns of landlords would be unwise.”

The line-by-line scrutiny of the Bill continues.