The ancient art of filibustering was employed in the Commons on Friday to put an end to any prospect of Sarah Teather’s ‘revenge evictions’ proposal getting through Parliament.

Her Tenancies (Reform) Bill was talked out by two MPs – both Tories and both private landlords – who between them kept talking for two and a half hours.

This was despite the fact that the Bill had cross-party support from both Labour and the coalition government.

It appeared that on Friday, the Tory whips had been less than active in trying to get their MPs to attend the session – or make their own backbenchers behave.

This was after an active campaign, single-handedly led by the Residential Landlords Association, which said that the Teather proposals could lead to some landlords finding it virtually impossible to take back possession of their own properties.

The key proposal was that landlords would not be able to use Section 21 within six months of a tenant making a complaint about disrepairs. The RLA said that some tenants would make repeated complaints to string out the process of eviction, while not paying rent.

Tellingly, ARLA entered the fray shortly before Friday’s debate, agreeing that some tenants would abuse the process.

Whether the Government listened is not known, but backbench Tory MPs Christopher Chope and Philip Davies talked the Bill out.

Davies’s speech was curtailed after an hour by deputy speaker Dawn Primarolo. Finally calling him to order, she said it was on the grounds of tedious repetition.

Davies had quoted at length from the Conservative Party’s 1987 manifesto, before quoting from various minutes, office guidance papers and statistics.

However, once forced to sit down, Chope then took over and spoke for a further 90 minutes

In the end, just 60 MPs managed to vote on a procedural motion to put the Bill to the vote before time ran out – but 100 are required for such a motion to proceed.

Filibustering is a tactic used by backbenchers to kill of legislation because they think it has been badly designed.

Predictably, Generation Rent reacted with fury, with director Alex Hilton saying on Twitter: “Prolific expenses claimer Christopher Chope MP talks out Revenge Evictions Bill. Taxpayers pay for his plush housing conditions.”

Housing bodies such as Shelter, which claimed that revenge evictions were a large-scale problem, expressed their dismay.

However, Paul Shamplina of evictions firm Landlord Action said: “This is great news for landlords.

“Whilst I fully agree that tenants need to be protected from the small minority of rogue landlords, there simply wasn’t enough evidence to support the need for more legislation which would have impacted a large number of good, reliable landlords.

“In the 24 years I have been dealing with problem tenants, I have only ever heard of the words ‘retaliation / revenge eviction’ in the last 18 months.

“Section 21 gives a landlord an automatic right of possession without having to give any grounds (reason) once the fixed term has expired.

“Shelter’s figures that 213,000 tenants have been served Section 21 notices as revenge evictions must be guesswork, because without surveying every landlord, it is hard to understand how they have reached this figure.”

He acknowledged the role played by the RLA.

RLA chairman Alan Ward said: “The RLA do not condone revenge evictions and want to see effective action to drive criminal landlords out of the private rented sector.

“However, this Bill was badly drafted and missed its target.

“It would have punished good landlords and allowed bad tenants, savvy with their rights, to play the system.”