The Labour donor Lord Alli evicted a family of five from one of his rental properties before increasing the rent by nearly £1,000 a month.
The family, who have school-age children, had lived in the five-bedroom north London townhouse for four years, paying £4,800 a month.
Days after they were handed a section 21 “no fault” eviction notice in June, the property was re-listed for £6,000 a month, amounting to a 25% increase.
The Guardian understands that the existing tenants offered to pay this increase in full, but this offer was refused. The home was then re-let to new tenants for £5,700 per month, a 19% increase.
The government is planning to abolish no-fault evictions under the renters’ rights bill and, in many situations, ban landlords from relisting their properties at higher rents for at least six months after evicting a tenant.
Waheed Alli, who is worth an estimated £200m, has donated over £500,000 to Labour since 2020 and is one of the party’s largest donors. He spent weeks in the spotlight last year due to the tens of thousands of pounds’ worth of gifts he gave to Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner, including spectacles and clothes donations to Starmer’s wife, Victoria. Starmer has also made temporary use of a £18m penthouse that belonged to Alli.
No-fault evictions are one of the leading causes of homelessness, according to the charity Shelter, because they give landlords the power to evict tenants with just two months’ notice, without giving any reason for the eviction.
The father of the family who was evicted from Lord Alli’s house told the i newspaper they pleaded with the property’s management agent to allow them to meet the increased asking price and stay in the property: “We have children who were settled in local schools … so we wanted to avoid the disruption if we could.
“We asked if there was any chance that we could even just stay an extra month so the kids wouldn’t be disrupted in September, and we could get through exams, but it was a no.”
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Speaking on Alli’s position as a Labour peer and major donor, the father added: “The hypocrisy just feels like too much … I voted Labour and I’m just incredibly disappointed.”
Before Labour came to power, the government promised to “immediately abolish no fault eviction”, but has yet to name an implementation date for the renters’ rights bill. Recent Ministry of Justice data revealed that 11,400 households in England were forcibly removed from their homes by bailiffs as a result of these evictions between July 2024 and June 2025.
A spokesperson for Alli refused to explain the reasons the family were evicted. She said: “Lord Alli is not a commercial landlord and he doesn’t manage – and has never managed – this property. This is his former home where he no longer lives and where one tenant was replaced with another for less money than the former tenant offered and at an amount lower than the market price. Clearly, this was not about money.”
The news comes a month after Rushanara Ali resigned as the government’s homelessness minister after it emerged she had evicted four tenants from a property she owns, then re-let it weeks later for £700 more a month.
