Homelessness minister Rushanara Ali has resigned after reportedly hiking the rent on a property she owns by hundreds of pounds – something described by one of her tenants as “extortion”.

That was just weeks after the previous tenants’ contract ended, The i Paper said.

Four tenants who rented a house in east London from Ms Ali were sent an email last November saying their lease would not be renewed, and which also gave them four months’ notice to leave, the newspaper reported.

The property was then re-listed with a £700 rent increase within weeks, the publication added.

In a letter to the prime minister, Ms Ali said that remaining in her role would be a “distraction from the ambitious work of this government”.

She added: “Further to recent reporting, I wanted to make it clear that at all times I have followed all relevant legal requirements.

“I believe I took my responsibilities and duties seriously, and the facts demonstrate this.”

Laura Jackson, one of Ms Ali’s former tenants, said she and three others collectively paid £3,300 in rent.

Weeks after she and her fellow tenants had left, the self-employed restaurant owner said she saw the house re-listed with a rent of around £4,000.

“It’s an absolute joke,” she said. “Trying to get that much money from renters is extortion.”

Ms Ali’s house, rented on a fixed-term contract, was put up for sale while the tenants were living there, and was only relisted as a rental because it had not sold, according to The i Paper.

The government’s Renters’ Rights Bill includes measures to ban landlords who end a tenancy to sell a property from re-listing it for six months.

The Bill, which is nearing its end stages of scrutiny in Parliament, will also abolish fixed-term tenancies and ensure landlords give four months’ notice if they want to sell their property.

Something Sir Keir’s increasingly unpopular government could have done without

Jon Craig

Chief political correspondent

@joncraig

Rushanara Ali’s swift and humiliating demise is a classic example of paying the price for the politician’s crime of “Do as I say, not as I do”.

She was Labour’s minister for homelessness, for goodness’ sake, yet she ejected tenants from her near-£1m town house then hiked the rent.

A more egregious case of ministerial double standards it would be difficult to imagine. She had to go and was no doubt told by 10 Downing Street to go quickly.

MP for the East End constituency of Bethnal Green and Stepney, Ms Ali was the very model of a modern Labour minister: a degree in PPE from Oxford University.

In her resignation letter to Sir Keir Starmer, she said she is quitting “with a heavy heart”. Really? She presumably didn’t have a heavy heart when she ejected her four tenants.

She’d previously spoken out against “private renters being exploited” and said the government would “empower people to challenge unreasonable rent increases”.

She was charging her four former tenants £3,300 a month. Yet after they moved out, she charged her new tenants £4,000, a rent increase of more than 20%.

In an area represented by the left-wing firebrand George Galloway from 2005 to 2010, Ms Ali had a majority of under 1,700 at the election last year.

Ominously for Labour, an independent candidate was second and the Greens third. No doubt Jeremy Corbyn’s new party will also stand next time.

In her resignation letter to the PM, Ms Ali said continuing in her ministerial role would be a distraction. Too right.

A distraction Sir Keir and his increasingly unpopular government could have done without.

Responding to her resignation, shadow housing secretary Sir James Cleverly said: “I said that her actions were total hypocrisy and that she should go if the accusations were shown to be true.”

A Liberal Democrat spokesperson said: “Rushanara Ali fundamentally misunderstood her role. Her job was to tackle homelessness, not to increase it.”

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Previously, a spokesperson for Ms Ali said the tenants “stayed for the entirety of their fixed term contract, and were informed they could stay beyond the expiration of the fixed term, while the property remained on the market, but this was not taken up, and they decided to leave the property”.

The prime minister thanked Ms Ali for her “diligent work” and for helping to “deliver this government’s ambitious agenda”.

Sir Keir Starmer said her work in putting in measures to repeal the Vagrancy Act would have a “significant impact”.

And he said she had been trying to encourage “more people to engage and participate in our democracy”, something that would leave a “lasting legacy”.

Donald Trump has said he will meet Vladimir Putin even if the Russian leader refuses to meet Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Asked by a reporter if Mr Putin needed to meet his Ukrainian counterpart in order to meet him, the US president replied: “No, he doesn’t. No.”

A Russian aide has said Washington and Moscow could hold talks “in the coming days”.

The same aide said the Americans had suggested a trilateral meeting but it was “not specifically discussed”.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “As President Trump said yesterday, the Russians expressed their desire to meet with President Trump, and the president is open to this meeting.

“President Trump would like to meet with both President Putin and President Zelenskyy because he wants this brutal war to end.

“The White House is working through the details of these potential meetings and details will be provided at the appropriate time.”

The White House has set a deadline of Friday for Moscow to show progress towards ending the three-year war in Ukraine or suffer additional economic sanctions.

Asked if that deadline would hold, Mr Trump said of Mr Putin: “It’s going to be up to him. We’re going to see what he has to say. It’s going to be up to him. Very disappointed.”

The Russian leader has played down the possibility of talks with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, saying that while it is possible, certain conditions must be met.

Mr Putin had been responding to an American proposal of a trilateral meeting between him, the Ukrainian president and Mr Trump.

The idea was floated by Steve Witkoff, the US president’s envoy, during talks with Mr Putin on Wednesday, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said.

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Mr Ushakov said the three-way option was “simply mentioned by the American representative during the meeting in the Kremlin”.

He added, however: “This option was not specifically discussed.”

On the prospect of meeting Mr Zelenskyy, Vladimir Putin said: “I have already said many times that I have nothing against it in general – it is possible.”

However, he distanced himself from any such meeting happening soon, adding: “But certain conditions must be created for this. Unfortunately, we are still far from creating such conditions.”

Mr Zelenskyy offered to speak to Mr Putin in May, challenging him to meet in Istanbul for talks on ending the war in Ukraine – an invitation the Russian leader declined.

While a trilateral meeting appears to be off the agenda, Mr Ushakov said an agreement had been reached for Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin to meet “in the coming days”.

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After the US president touted a “very good prospect” of the leaders meeting for Ukraine ceasefire talks, Mr Ushakov said on Thursday that Russian and American officials had started working on the details.

“At the suggestion of the American side, an agreement was essentially reached to hold a bilateral meeting at the highest level in the coming days,” he said.

“We are now beginning concrete preparations together with our American colleagues.”

Regarding a trilateral meeting, Mr Ushakov said: “We propose, first of all, to focus on preparing a bilateral meeting with Trump, and we consider it most important that this meeting be successful and productive.”

It would be the first time the two leaders have met since Mr Trump returned to office, and follows a three-hour meeting between Mr Putin and Steve Witkoff in Moscow on Wednesday.

Following the meeting, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said it appeared that Russia was “more inclined to a ceasefire”.

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A poll from Gallup suggests 69% of Ukrainians support a negotiated end to the war with Russia – an almost complete reversal from 2022, when 73% favoured fighting until victory.

Most said they were sceptical the war would end soon, with 68% saying they believed it was unlikely that active fighting would stop within the next 12 months.

It could be diplomatic dynamite.

The first meeting between a sitting US and Russian president in more than four years, following one of the bleakest periods in the history of their countries’ bilateral relations.

But a Putin–Trump summit does not necessarily mean there will be a ceasefire.

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On the one hand, it could signal that a point of agreement has been reached and a face-to-face meeting is needed to seal the deal.

That has always been Russia’s stance. It’s consistently said it would only meet at a presidential level if there’s something to agree on.

On the other hand, there might not be anything substantive. It might just be for show.

It might just be the latest attempt by the Kremlin to diffuse Donald Trump’s anger and dodge his deadline to end the war by Friday or face sanctions.

It would give Trump something that can be presented as progress, but in reality, it delivers anything but.

After all, there has certainly not been any sign that Moscow is willing to soften its negotiating position or step back from its goals on the battlefield.

Tellingly, perhaps, it’s this latter view which has been taken by some of the Russian press on Thursday.

“Putin won” is the headline in Moskovsky Komsomolets regarding the Kremlin leader’s meeting with Witkoff.

The state-run tabloid quotes a political scientist, Marat Bashirov, who claims Putin “bought time” ahead of Friday’s deadline.

“It is noteworthy that in his rhetoric [on sanctions] Trump did not mention Russia at all,” the paper notes.

Komsomolskaya Pravda is similarly dismissive.

“Donald Trump has two simple interests in connection with Ukraine: to earn money for America, and political whistles and the Nobel Peace Prize for himself,” it says.

“Russia has its own interests,” it adds, “securing them is what Vladimir Putin will seek at a meeting with Trump.”

At this stage, the most likely location is the United Arab Emirates. Putin met the country’s president in the Kremlin today, and afterwards said it would be a “suitable location”. It felt like a strong hint.

And the UAE certainly makes sense.

It’s played mediator for a number of the prisoner swaps between Russia and Ukraine; it has good relations with the US (and was one of Trump’s stops on his recent Middle East tour); and most importantly for Moscow, it’s not a member of the International Criminal Court. So Putin doesn’t have to worry about being arrested.

But if NBC’s reports are correct, that a Putin-Trump summit is conditional on the Russian president meeting with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy, then the summit may not happen at all.

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Until now, Putin has refused to meet Zelenskyy, despite numerous demands from Kyiv, because he views him as illegitimate.

The Kremlin said the prospect of a trilateral meeting between the leaders was mentioned by Witkoff on Wednesday, but the proposal was left “completely without comment” by Russia.