Rushanara Ali has resigned as homelessness minister following revelations she hiked the rent on a London property she owns shortly after removing the tenants.
The Labour MP is said to have re-listed the home near the Olympic Village for £700-a-month more, shortly after telling four occupants they had to move out.
The tenants said they were given just four months’ notice to leave last November because the Bethnal Green and Stepney MP wanted to sell the townhouse.
But when a buyer could not be found, it was returned to the rental market at a significantly higher price.
Who is Rushanara Ali?
Ms Ali, 50, moved to Britain aged seven and grew up in the East End after her family emigrated from Bangladesh in the early 1980s.
She was the first in her family to go to university, studying Philosophy, Politics and Economics at St John's College, Oxford.
In 2010, she became the Labour MP for Bethnal Green and Bow and was the first British Bangladeshi elected to Parliament.
She now represents the newly drawn Bethnal Green and Stepney constituency.
Roles in the Labour Party
Ms Ali held several roles when Labour was in opposition, including shadow minister for international development and shadow minister for education.
She resigned from her education brief in September 2014 following her abstention on a vote supporting UK airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq.
In 2023 she was made shadow minister for investment and small business. After Labour’s general election victory last year, she was appointed minister for building safety and homelessness under Housing Secretary Angela Rayner.
But in October 2024, following concerns raised by Grenfell fire survivors over a perceived conflict of interest, she lost the building safety brief.
Challenges and Controversies
In 2020, a court heard Ms Ali was left “living in a constant state of fear” after being subjected to a barrage of racist messages and threats to blow up her offices by a stalker.
Hussain Sha sent hundreds of threatening emails to her, her staff and some of her family members and was barred from contacting the MP for 12 years following the abuse.
Ms Ali faced local anger and protests in late 2023 after abstaining on a ceasefire vote on the war in Gaza.
At the 2019 general election she won a huge majority of more than 37,500 votes. But following the fallout over the Gaza vote in Parliament, this dropped to just 1,689 at the 2024 general election.
In October, Ms Ali relinquished her building safety ministerial brief following complaints from the families of Grenfell fire victims over her receiving hospitality from building material firms.
She had regularly attended the Franco-British Colloque, an annual policy forum which had been co-chaired by Pierre-Andre de Chalendar.
Mr De Chalendar had served as chairman of Saint-Gobain - the parent company of one of the firms heavily criticised in the Grenfell inquiry for supplying the flammable cladding used on the west London tower block.
Ms Ali faced calls to resign after allegedly hiking the rent on a property she owns by hundreds of pounds just weeks after the previous tenants' contract ended.
Four tenants who rented a house in east London from Rushanara Ali were sent an email last November saying their lease would not be renewed, which also gave them four months' notice to leave, the i Paper reported.
Ms Ali's property was then re-listed with a £700 rent increase within weeks, the newspaper said.
Kevin Hollinrake, the Conservative party chairman, called for the minister to stand down, accusing her of "staggering hypocrisy".
A spokesperson for the minister said: "Rushanara takes her responsibilities seriously and complied with all relevant legal requirements."
Tom Darling, Director at the Renters' Reform Coalition, said called the situation “mind-boggling” and pointed out that Government is considering an amendment to the Renters' Rights Bill from the House of Lords which reduces the ban on reletting after eviction from 12 months to six months.
“The Government must remove this amendment, and at the very least Minister Ali must recuse herself from any discussions on this within government."
Within hours of the row erupting, Ms Ali resigned from her role in the Government.
In a letter to Sir Keir Starmer, she insisted she had “at all times” followed “all legal requirements” and taken her responsibilities “seriously”.
But she added: “It is clear that continuing in my role will be a distraction from the ambitious work of the Government.
“I have therefore decided to resign from my ministerial position.”
