The government’s extension of free nursery hours reflects a late recognition of problems the Tories’ are ill-equipped to address

Britain’s welfare state was conceived to care for citizens from cradle to grave, although changing governments have prioritised different parts of that demographic range. The Conservatives have tended to be most attentive to the older end of the electorate. Pensioners reliably vote Tory; infants have no vote at all. But their parents do, which is why Rishi Sunak’s administration belatedly woke up to the salience of unavailable or unaffordable childcare.

The product of that realisation was a promise to expand subsidised nursery provision in the 2023 budget. Previously, parents of children aged three to four were entitled to 30 hours of free childcare a week. As of this month , parents of two-year-olds (and earning less than £100,000 a year) will be eligible for an extra 15 hours. A further phase of the extension is due in September, with 15 more hours available to infants from nine months, rising to 30 hours by the end of 2025.

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Group working with Labour and Lib Dem MPs oppose government’s move to introduce harsher measures

Rough sleeping could be fully decriminalised after 200 years under proposals from rebel Conservative MPs to repeal legislation dating from the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars.

A group of Tories working with Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs want to strip out proposed and existing legislation that criminalises homelessness.

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The inequalities that have grown up around housing are glaring. Abolishing no-fault evictions should be just the start

More than four years ago, the 2019 Conservative manifesto pledged to abolish no-fault evictions in England, in an effort to make tenancies more secure and remove the right of private landlords to evict people from their homes at will. In the past few years, a huge campaigning effort went into ensuring that this commitment would be kept. Last week, it became clear that it wouldn’t be. Jacob Young, a minister in Michael Gove’s levelling up department, revealed in a letter to Tory MPs that the government plans to amend the bill now making its way through parliament. The promised ban on no-fault evictions (also known as section 21 notices) will not be enacted until “the courts are ready” – at some unspecified future date.

This capitulation to landlords, dressed up as a reasonable compromise, is in reality a disgraceful betrayal. The renters reform bill has cross-party support. Ministers would have had no difficulty getting it through the House of Commons with the evictions ban intact – even if some of their own MPs, including a group involved in lobbying to water down the bill who are themselves landlords , had rebelled. Polling shows that the public recognises the severity of Britain’s housing affordability crisis , and particularly its impact on younger people’s lives. Putting the interests of landlords before those of renters is a political choice.

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Social housing tenants are suffering just as much as those in the private rented sector, writes Suzanne Muna . Plus letters from Derrick Joad , Rosemary Walker and Bob Colenutt

Thank you for John Harris’s excellent call for politicians to act on the housing crisis ( Neglected, derided and exploited more than ever: why won’t the UK protect those who rent a home?, 24 March ). The Social Housing Action Campaign’s perspective is that we are no longer in a housing crisis. It is system collapse. Tenants and residents in social housing are suffering just as those in the private rented sector. Last year, the vast majority of housing associations utilised the maximum scope allowed by government and increased their rents by 7%. These inflated rents will rise again this year by 7.7%.

Shared owners fare even worse. This tenure is long recognised as combining the worst of both worlds, having to pay rents and mortgages but enduring the full cost of bills, maintenance and repairs for their homes no matter how small the proportion they actually “own”.

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Pressure on Michael Gove to act as householders see bills rise 40% , with many saying that they cannot afford to pay

Some of the UK’s largest housing providers have dramatically increased annual service charges by thousands of pounds, plunging residents into financial crisis, an Observer investigation has found.

Many residents who bought shared-ownership properties built as affordable homes have been sent bills in recent weeks with increases of more than 40%. Some say they are unable to sell the properties having now been lumbered with “extortionate” charges and no cap on future increases. More than 1,000 people across the country are now threatening to refuse to pay.

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Opposition MPs criticise changes to renters’ reform bill, which cast doubt on removal of no-fault evictions

Rishi Sunak and Michael Gove have been accused of caving in to Tory MPs lobbying in favour of landlords’ interests after it emerged that significant aspects of the renters’ reform bill are to be watered down.

Changes will include an amendment to prevent tenants ending contracts in a tenancy’s first six months, and another casting doubt on the removal of no-fault evictions, a minister told MPs in a leaked letter.

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The idea to sell off council houses was Tory bribery, writes Michael Meadowcroft , while Toby Wood laments the decline in state control over housing, and Dr Orest Mulka says Labour should offer private tenants the right to buy

Margaret Thatcher’s right-to-buy policy is even more sinister than the rightly critical article by Phineas Harper sets out ( Councils now sell off more houses than they build. Thatcher’s legacy, right to buy, is a failure, 26 March ). Putting it bluntly, it was a brilliant way for the Conservatives to bribe a large sector of mainly Labour voters to switch.

The significant discounts offered made buying one’s council house a huge bargain. What is more, in terms of housing provision, it did not benefit the sitting tenants as much as giving a substantial gift to their children, who often provided the initial capital knowing that they would inherit the house and make a big gain on its sale or on its subsequent letting for profit.

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If it gets to No 10, the party should fund a social housing boom, tackle homelessness – and usher in a post-Grenfell era of safety

• Our writers and experts name the pledges Labour must include in its manifesto

The failures in housing policy over several generations are now all too obvious: rising homelessness, families and key workers priced out of cities and a generation unable to move out of their parents’ homes. The next government needs to take radical action to change this picture, rather than make small tweaks to a failed system. These are some of the steps I would take to get there.

Peter Apps is the author of Show Me the Bodies: How We Let Grenfell Happen

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The right still reveres her flagship policy, but the repercussions are more homelessness, spiralling rents and bankrupt councils

Of all the policies imposed on Britain by Conservative governments, few have reshaped the country’s fortunes as enduringly as right to buy . For a lucky few, the policy has meant colossal windfalls and the chance to snap up some of the best properties in the country on the cheap. For the rest, right to buy has meant rising homelessness, spiralling rents and local authorities facing bankruptcy as the social housing stock dwindles, year by year.

In a mere four decades, Margaret Thatcher’s flagship initiative, forcing councils to sell off public housing at huge discounts, has seen two-thirds of British council homes privatised. City halls across the country are now on the brink of insolvency , in large part due to the enormous cost of having to provide temporary accommodation without enough council-owned homes left to go round.

Phineas Harper is a writer and curator

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