TORY ministers must prevent landlords from using rent hikes to get around the long-delayed ban on section 21 “no-fault” evictions, rent campaigners demanded today.

Current plans for the renters’ reform Bill, expected to be published next week, are “open to a range of abuses and would fail to properly abolish ‘no-fault’ eviction,” the London Renters Union (LRU) warned.

In the four years since Downing Street first promised to scrap Thatcher-era section 21 orders, renters have faced an escalating crisis, the union stressed, with “no-fault” evictions spiking amid skyrocketing rents and tenants reporting disrepair being twice as likely to be kicked out in retaliation.