Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Dan Carden and Mel Stride

Monday 5th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

13. What assessment his Department has made of the potential impact of real-term reductions in local housing allowance rates on levels of poverty.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mel Stride)]

First, on behalf of the whole House, may I welcome the hon. Member for City of Chester (Samantha Dixon) to this House, and wish her every happiness and a productive time in the House?

The Government have maintained the uplift they provided in the local housing allowance in 2020, at a cost of almost £1 billion, targeting the 30th percentile of rents. Those who need assistance with housing costs also have recourse to the discretionary housing payments administered by local authorities.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mel Stride]

I did of course very carefully consider the points that the hon. Lady has made, just as I very carefully considered the extent to which there should be an uprating of benefits more generally; they went up by 10.1%—the level of the consumer prices index at that time. I also considered very carefully what the uplift in pensions should be and, again, that was 10.1%, the level of CPI. For pensioners, we also stood by the triple lock.

[Dan Carden]

In Liverpool, the shortfall between housing benefit and the cheapest rents has now risen to £1,360 over a year. Outside London, private sector rents are rising across the country at an average of 11.8%, yet no one from the Conservative party seems to recognise that rent increases also cause inflation. Conservative Members are frequently eager to call for pay restraint and for benefits to be held down but never for landlords to heed the same advice. My constituents now face homelessness. Does the Secretary of State recognise that high housing costs and completely inadequate housing benefit lie at the root of the cost of living crisis and that the choice for the Government should be between capping rents and raising support?

[Mel Stride]

The hon. Gentleman rightly raises inflation, which we are all having to contend with at the moment. That is why my right hon. Friend the Chancellor came before the House at the time of the autumn statement and set out a clear plan as to how to bring inflation down. The Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts that it will be half its current level in a year’s time. A large amount of support has been put forward, with the £650 cost of living payment this year to those low-income households that he describes, covering some 8 million people up and down the country.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Dan Carden and Mel Stride

Monday 31st October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

I have taken a personal vow not to engage in too much Punch and Judy politics with the hon. Lady during Question Time, so I will not talk about what happens to unemployment when different parties get into power; I will leave that for another day. She is absolutely right about the key challenge around economic inactivity. That is why the Department doubled the number of new work coaches in the last two years; there are an additional 13,500 people working to support the exact people whom she rightly identified as needing that assistance to get into work. As I said, I intend to put considerably more energy into the whole issue of economic inactivity, and to bring announcements on the subject to the House in due course.

[Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

4. What assessment his Department has made of changes in the level of the sanction rate for universal credit between November 2021 and May 2022.