Conservative MP Natalie Elphicke has defected to the Labour party after years of pushing tenant-friendly policies and decrying rogue landlords.

Formerly seen as being on the right of the Tory party, she is the second Conservative MP to cross the floor in recent weeks, after colleague Dan Poulter.

During the Renters Reform Bill debate, Elphicke failed to convince the government to include relocation payments for tenants if they were evicted within two years of the start of the tenancy and to restrict tenancy grounds to prevent tenants being forced to leave on trivial grounds.

Scare politicians

Last year, Elphicke claimed the NRLA’s chief Ben Beadle had been “caught red-handed making up stories about a shortage of rental stock so landlords can jack up rents and to scare politicians who should know better” – although a Commons committee confirmed he did not mislead MPs when giving evidence about the diminishing supply of private rented housing.

Although the MP for Dover’s views on immigration and asylum policy sit less easily with many of her new colleagues, Elphicke’s stance on housing is more in tune with the Labour mainstream. In 2022, she proposed that all private rents should be frozen to help renters with the cost of living and was part of a cross-party project to build houses for homeless people.

Supported housing

She has also called for rogue landlords of vulnerable people living in supported housing to have their rent payments docked if they provide substandard housing or care to those in need.

Elphicke was elected in 2019 following a career as a housing and finance lawyer, taking over the seat which had been held by her disgraced, then-husband Charlie, who was jailed for two years after being found guilty in 2020 of sexually assaulting two women.

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