Markus Andrews

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailThe government has caved under pressure from landlord Tory MPs to water down a long-promised plan to ban no-fault evictions.Michael Gove has written to Conservative backbenchers announcing measures to “bolster landlord protections” in the Renters Reform Bill, which was designed to provide more security and better value for tenants.The long-delayed bill was introduced to parliament last May to deliver on a commitment from the 2019 Tory manifesto to abolish Section 21 so-called “no-fault” evictions.But a leaked letter on Thursday revealed Mr Gove had made a series of concessions which he trumpeted as “having the support of main landlord groups”.Campaigners said the leaked letter, obtained by The Sun, showed the long-delayed bill was fast becoming a “landlords’ charter”. Michael Gove was accused of turning the renters’ reform bill into a ‘landlords’ charter’ The Renters’ Reform Coalition (RRC) accused the government of making “major concessions to landlord groups and pro-landlord Conservative MPs”.Delays followed and it was not until 2023 that the Renters Reform Bill made it to the House of Commons.The government’s flagship legislation to help renters is fast becoming a landlords’ charter – watch as landlord groups today declare victory now, having exacted a significant toll on this policy in exchange for their supportTom Darling, Renters’ Reform CoalitionA group representing landlords has urged ministers to “crack on to ensure the bill can proceed with the scrutiny it deserves” and criticised a lack of progress to date as being “destabilising and damaging” for all concerned.Earlier this month, communities minister Jacob Young told parliament when asked about progress of the bill: “We are absolutely committed to the abolition of section 21, I am personally committed to that and we will bring back the bill as soon as we’re able to.”The leaked letter from Mr Young states that the bill will return to the Commons for its report stage when parliament comes back after the Easter break.It notes “concerns from colleagues about the smooth operation of the new tenancy system for both landlords and tenants”.The lack of progress and uncertainty about the future is destabilising and damaging for those living and working in the private-rented sectorBen Beadle, National Residential Landlords AssociationThe government has previously said the abolition of Section 21 would not come in before reforms in the court system to ensure it was also a fair process for landlords.On Section 21, the letter states that an amendment will be brought forward requiring “the Lord Chancellor to publish an assessment on barriers to possession and the readiness of the courts in advance of abolishing section 21 for existing tenancies”.Tom Darling, RRC campaign manager, said the government was “selling renters down the river with concessions that will prevent the vast majority of renters from seeing the end of Section 21 before the next election, as we’d been promised”.He added: “The government’s flagship legislation to help renters is fast becoming a landlords’ charter – watch as landlord groups today declare victory now, having exacted a significant toll on this policy in exchange for their support.Only a watertight bill will curb the unfairness that’s hardwired into England’s rigged renting systemPolly Neate, Shelter“The bill needs to come back to parliament as soon as possible and renters will be hoping to see significant changes to the bill in the House of Lords; otherwise this legislation will hardly be an improvement on the status quo, and in some cases it will make things worse.”Ben Beadle, chief executive of the National Residential Landlords Association (NRLA), said the “rumour, speculation and off-the-record briefings about the future of the bill has caused a huge amount of concern and uncertainty for tenants and responsible landlords”.He added: “The government has a mandate to end section 21 repossessions. Our focus has been on ensuring that the replacement system works, and is fair, to both tenants and responsible landlords. The changes being proposed would achieve this balance.“Ministers now need to crack on to ensure the bill can proceed with the scrutiny it deserves.“The lack of progress and uncertainty about the future is destabilising and damaging for those living and working in the private-rented sector. It is time to bring this to an end.”The Liberal Democrats said the bill has been “left in tatters” and accused Mr Gove of caving in to Tory MPs.Housing spokesman Helen Morgan said: “Michael Gove has caved in to Conservative MPs, meaning his party’s manifesto promise to ban no-fault evictions has been left in tatters.“This watered-down plan means the vast majority of renters still face being evicted from their homes through no fault of their own.“The Liberal Democrats will keep fighting to stand up for a fair deal for renters who have been disastrously let down by this Conservative government.”Labour MP Matthew Pennycook said the government had ‘put the interests of party management ahead of what is right for the British people’ Shelter chief executive Polly Neate said it was “cowardly that the government would rather betray renters than stand up to a minority of MPs hell-bent on browbeating them into watering down” the bill.She said “only a watertight bill will curb the unfairness that’s hardwired into England’s rigged renting system”.Labour’s shadow housing minister, Matthew Pennycook, accused Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and housing secretary Michael Gove of having “chosen once again to put the interests of party management ahead of what is right for the British people”.Vowing Labour would “immediately abolish section 21 ‘no-fault’ evictions and deliver the security and rights that renters deserve”, he said: “After years of delay, private renters have every right to be furious at the watering down of the vital protections the Tories promised them.”A government source said: “This is a balanced package of measures that delivers our manifesto commitment to get rid of unfair no-fault evictions and will ensure a fairer private rented sector for both tenants and landlords.“The bill will return to the House of Commons shortly and amendments will be scrutinised, debated and voted upon in the usual way.” More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster email Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida reiterated Thursday his determination to work toward a summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un to realize the return of Japanese people believed abducted by North Korean agents in the 1970s and 80s.“I remain committed to realizing this for Japan,” he told reporters, while declining to directly address the recent comments from North Korea that suggested such a meeting would be possible only if Japan stops pressing the abductions issue.Speaking at a news conference after the government budget cleared parliament, Kishida stressed he was directly involved in high-level negotiations to fix various bilateral problems, amid growing worries about neighboring North Korea’s missiles and nuclear weapons programs.In 2002, Kim Jong Il, the late father of Kim Jong Un, told then-Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi that its agents had kidnapped 13 Japanese in the 1970s and 80s, and allowed five of them to return to Japan.Japan thinks hundreds more may have been abducted during that period and that some are still alive. Koizumi’s second visit to North Korea in 2004 was the last summit between the two nations.Kishida, prime minister since 2021, also promised to wrest the nation out of decades-long deflation and set off “a positive cycle” of higher wages, company profits and strong productivity.“We have this historic chance to get out of deflation,” Kishida said, noting that the changes will come under his “new capitalism” program, based on economic changes such as a more mobile labor force, investments in artificial intelligence and income growth for the middle class. He promised that legal revisions and an internal investigation were underway to deal with a burgeoning scandal centered around political funding that ruling party lawmakers had allegedly secretly received through shady methods like expensive tickets for fundraising parties. Kishida said more time is needed to sort out details, but the erring politicians will get punished, to restore public trust.Kishida has seen his popularity plummet to record lows in recent months over the scandal. But his ouster, even if it happens, will likely result in another leader from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, because the opposition is weak and splintered.There is even speculation among pundits that Japan will get its first female prime minister, such as Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike. As a woman, Koike would be seen as a fresh change, although she is unlikely to stray too far from the status quo.A Japanese prime minister has almost always been a member of the lower house of Parliament, so Koike would need to run for a seat and give up being city governor. The Liberal Democrats have ruled Japan almost incessantly after World War II, except for brief periods of opposition control. ___Yuri Kageyama is on X: https://twitter.com/yurikageyama More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailGeorge Osborne has suggested that Rachel Reeves is the “heir to David Cameron” – and himself – as he predicted Labour will win the next election. The shadow chancellor channelled another former Tory leader, Margaret Thatcher, during part of a major speech on the economy last week.The former chancellor once famously called Lord Cameron, now the foreign secretary, the “heir to Blair”. At the time, he says, “the Tory refuseniks were appalled”. But, he adds in a diary for The Spectator magazine, “moving on from lost battles is the key to future success”.In government, he says, he and Lord Cameron “accepted parts of the Blair inheritance – social liberalism, the minimum wage and so on, just as Blair had before him accepted the Thatcher inheritance of union laws and the market economy”.The same pattern can now be seen in the current shadow chancellor, he suggests. “Now Reeves is saying she wants to strengthen the Office for Budget Responsibility I introduced, adopt austere fiscal rules and won’t put up corporation tax,” he points out, asking: “Is she the heir to Cameron/Osborne?” Elsewhere, Mr Osborne, once widely seen as the man most likely to replace Lord Cameron as prime minister, predicts Labour is “going to win” the looming general election. It comes after a polling guru put Labour’s chances of securing the keys to No 10 at 99 per cent. In a blow to the Tories, Sir John Curtice said the chances the Conservatives could turn around their dire poll ratings was small, and added: “The Labour Party will be in a much stronger position to negotiate a minority government than the Conservatives because, apart from possibly the DUP, the Conservatives have no friends in the House of Commons.”Labour has consistently been 20 points ahead in the polls. Rishi Sunak has ruled out a general election on 2 May, but the prime minister still faces a potential electoral mauling on the day as voters cast their ballots in the local elections. The PM is also facing an exodus from his party after two cabinet ministers quit ahead of stepping down as MPs at the general election.A total of 63 Conservative MPs, including former PM Theresa May, have now said publicly they will not stand the next time around.A Labour source dismissed the “heir to Cameron” claims as “rubbish”. They added: “A claim that has about as much credibility as Osborne’s campaign for David Cameron to be Labour’s foreign secretary. And it’s because of the OBR we know the damage five Conservative prime ministers have done to the economy.” More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailRepetition of words, tautology and paragraphs starting with “however” are some tell-tale features of ChatGPT’s writing style, researchers have found.The writing style of the artificial intelligence tool is “bland” and “journalistic”, according to a Cambridge University Press and Assessment study.It comes after the rise of generative AI tools, like ChatGPT, has sparked concerns about cheating among pupils in the education sector.Researchers compared essays written by three first-year undergraduate students, with the aid of ChatGPT, with 164 essays written by IGCSE students.These essays were marked by examiners and the undergraduates were then interviewed and their essays were analysed.The study found essays written with the help of ChatGPT performed poorly on analysis and comparison skills compared to non-ChatGPT-assisted essays.But ChatGPT-assisted essays performed strongly on information and reflection skills.Researchers identified a number of key features of the ChatGPT writing style, which included the use of Latinate vocabulary, repetition of words or phrases and ideas, and pleonasms.Essays written with the help of ChatGPT were also more likely to use paragraphs starting with discourse markers like “however”, “moreover”, and “overall”, and numbered lists with items.The researchers said ChatGPT’s default writing style “echoes the bland, clipped, and objective style that characterises much generic journalistic writing found on the internet”.The report said: “The students found ChatGPT useful for gathering information quickly.“However, they considered that complete reliance on this technology would produce essays of a low academic standard.”Lead researcher Jude Brady, of Cambridge University Press and Assessment, said: “Our findings offer insights into the growing area of generative AI and assessment, which is still largely uncharted territory.“Despite the small sample size, we are excited about these findings as they have the capacity to inform the work of teachers as well as students.”She added: “We hope our research might help people to identify when a piece of text has been written by ChatGPT.“For students and the wider population, learning to use and detect generative AI forms an increasingly important aspect of digital literacy.” More