The Observer view on Dan Poulter and the failing Conservative government | Observer Editorial

The government has been promising to strengthen rights for renters since April 2019, when Theresa May announced that she would scrap the powers that allow landlords to evict their tenants with no reason.

It is the fact that so much of the private rented sector is of terrible quality: a quarter of these homes do not meet basic standards, compared with 12% of social housing.

Four in 10 renters in the past year said they were forced into an unwanted move The expense and lack of security create a new class of social problems: young families with children who have no housing security and may find themselves forced to move in the middle of the school year, but with no affordable options close to their family and their child’s school.

But they would have included important new protections for renters that would have acted as a brake on increasing rents and provided greater security; most notably, by scrapping no-fault evictions.

The protection period for new tenants during which a landlord cannot evict them on the grounds they want to sell up or move into the property has also been reduced from two years in the original government consultation to just six months.

There are countless other examples of the government pursuing policies that are doomed to fail in the name of electioneering: the National Audit Office last week published a damning report that concluded there are significant uncertainties about whether its plans to expand the free childcare offer will be possible due to a lack of capacity in the sector.