Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Field of Birkenhead and Steve Webb

Monday 3rd November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

My hon. Friend is quite right. We know that the risk of a child, for example, being in poverty is three times as great if they are in a workless household rather than a working household. We have almost become blasé about new record falls in unemployment month after month. That is the key to our drive to tackle poverty.

[Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

I ask the Minister this week to support the living wage campaign in his own Department. Can he tell the House how many contracted-out workers outside London in his Department have yet to receive the living wage?

[Steve Webb]

The right hon. Gentleman deserves great credit for his promotion of the living wage. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State inherited a situation in which some of the Department’s employees were not receiving the living wage. Our Department has committed to it, and we have had that dialogue with our subcontractors as well.

Under-Occupancy Penalty (Birkenhead)

Debate between Lord Field of Birkenhead and Steve Webb

Tuesday 26th March 2013 Westminster Hall

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)]

Good afternoon, Mr Benton. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) on securing a debate that is of considerable importance to his constituents. I entirely accept that the effect of this nationwide policy is different in different areas, and that a higher proportion of working-age households are affected in the north-west than in some other parts of the country.

[Mr Frank Field]

Will the Minister give way?

[Steve Webb]

I thought that that was fairly uncontentious, but I will give way.

[Mr Field]

While the Minister is washing his hands, can he tell us how many of his constituents will be affected?

[Steve Webb]

I am representing the Government rather than discussing my constituents, but clearly far fewer of mine are affected than the right hon. Gentleman’s, which is no great surprise to anyone.

The right hon. Gentleman’s speech was made in a vacuum, without mention of the fiscal context or how we treat other tenants. He used various lurid adjectives to describe the policy, as though it was some uniquely unfair concept that where benefits are paying someone’s rent, the level of benefits should have regard to the size of the household. He suggested that this is some unprecedented, evil thing, the like of which he has never come across in 30 years in Parliament—except that he was a Minister in my Department and, intermittently, a supporter of the previous Government, who introduced the local housing alliance. As I am sure he knows, with that allowance we say to private sector tenants on housing benefit that, broadly speaking, the rents we pay will reflect household size: generally, if not universally, someone can have private rent up to, now, the 30th percentile of rents for a household of the size it is. For some years, therefore, we have said to 1 million LHA private sector tenants, “We won’t pay benefit for an extra bedroom. If you want one, that’s fine, but you pay for it.”

If that policy is fair and appropriate for private sector tenants, why is it squalid, evil and unprecedented for social tenants? Surely consistency and fairness—a word the right hon. Gentleman used—mean that we should treat people the same way, whether they are private sector or social tenants. One might argue, indeed, that social tenants generally have the advantage of a subsidised rent, which private sector tenants do not have, and we treat private sector tenants unfairly in the sense that we do not give them an extra bedroom.

[Mr Field]

The Minister knows perfectly well that the local housing allowance level we set was above the average amount for those in social housing, so there is still a real difference in the rent levels for what someone can command in the private sector compared with the public sector.

[Steve Webb]

The right hon. Gentleman reinforces my point: people in the private sector were having to pay higher rents than those in the social sector, and they could not have a spare bedroom.

[Mr Field]

No, taxpayers were required to pay higher rents.

[Steve Webb]

People in the social rented sector still benefit from subsidised rents and, potentially, spare bedrooms. The figure used by the right hon. Gentleman was of more than 800,000 spare bedrooms in households where the rent is paid for by housing benefits.

To give a sense of scale, we are asking a household with one spare bedroom to contribute £2 a day on average for having the spare bedroom. I do not belittle the financial pressures that many households are under, because it would be entirely wrong of me to do so, but we know from experience of the private rented sector that some households will decide that, notwithstanding the financial pressures on them, £2 a day for the advantage of that extra bedroom is a price that they will pay. There will also be many other responses. The right hon. Gentleman mentioned taking in lodgers, and some housing associations and local authorities have given their tenants advice on how to do that. It is good use of a spare room, because it provides accommodation to someone, such as a young single person perhaps, as well as extra income to the household, and deals with the problem.

There will be some movement in the social rented sector. In the right hon. Gentleman’s area, 20 housing associations and local authorities have come together to form Propertypool Plus, doing exactly what they should be doing, which is pooling their stock and giving a much greater chance of having something to suit a particular family than an individual housing association would have. If we facilitate someone moving from under-occupied accommodation into a house that fits, someone else who is living in overcrowded accommodation can also move to a house that fits, which seems to be an entirely good thing, although the latter person’s voice was silent in the speech of the right hon. Gentleman.

I looked at the Wirral housing strategy for 2011 to 2026, and the council has realised that under-occupation is an issue. Before we invented our policy, the local authority stated:

“Research has identified that there are a number of people who are under occupying their home, regardless of tenure,”

going on to say that

“the Council will seek to help people by offering a range of services”

to help them live in more appropriate accommodation. There is therefore recognition in Wirral of a mismatch between the homes people are living in and the homes that they might need, perhaps particularly in the case of older people, although I stress that pensioners are exempt from our policy.

Creative things are being done in the right hon. Gentleman’s part of the world. For example, Wirral metropolitan borough council has obtained £2 million of Homes and Communities Agency funding to work on empty properties and plans to bring 765 empty properties back into use over a three-year period. He is right to say that supply is a crucial part of the story. We want to ensure that the supply is there for people, but that will not happen overnight. We also know that initiatives to deal with under-occupation have not really worked. Simply saying, “Would you like to move to somewhere smaller?” when there is no reason for anyone to do so, has not worked, and we have to regard the spare bedrooms in social housing in this country as a precious resource, because there is not enough housing.

The right hon. Gentleman colourfully described bricking up spare bedrooms, but I can save the landlords he is seeking to send down that track the trouble. If, for example, they want to designate a property with one bedroom occupied and a spare bedroom as a one-bedroom property, they can do so. They do not need to brick anything up or knock any walls down; they can simply designate it as a one-bedroom property. They will take the lower rent, but the tenant is not under-occupying. The reduction in the spare-room subsidy would not apply because there is not a spare room; it is the landlord who takes the financial hit in that situation. Knowsley local authority has, on occasion, followed such a policy. If landlords decide that that is the best solution, we have no problem with that. Obviously, we get the saving, because we are only paying the rent for a one-bedroom property and not a two-bedroom property, so if local authorities and other landlords can bear the financial impact, that might be a part of the mix. I do not think that many will be able to do so, but questions of bricking up rooms do not arise.

I have come across cases in which housing associations have designated a box room as a second bedroom and they have been gaily claiming the rent on a two-bedroom property. Then this measure comes in and it is quickly apparent that it is not really a bedroom; it is just a box room. Part of the answer is for landlords to be honest about the nature of their properties and say whether there really is a spare bedroom that someone could sleep in. They should then designate the property accordingly.

The right hon. Gentleman mentioned fairness. I have referred to fairness between social and private tenants, but what about fairness between overcrowded households, households on the waiting list and those who are in under-occupation? In Wirral, there are 21,280 households on the waiting list for a home. Where is their voice in this debate? I may be wrong, but I do not think the right hon. Gentleman mentioned the people on the waiting list or the people who are overcrowded. Fairness is surely about them as well as the people already in occupation.

We recognise that there are some people who should not be affected by this measure. That is why, for example, we have exempted pensioners. People living in their lifetime home, who have retired and have no prospect of working again, are exempt. We have also taken the view that local authorities need money to deal with what one might loosely call hard cases. In Wirral, in the year that is coming to an end—2012-13—roughly £500,000 of discretionary housing payments were available; next year it will be not far short of £1 million. For individuals whom it would be wrong or inhumane to expect to move, money is there to make up the shortfall. Nearly £1 million in that local authority and about £150 million nationwide is a huge sum of money, provided to make sure that where the room is not really spare and where it would be inappropriate to expect someone to move out or put someone else in the room, local authorities have got the resource to respond appropriately.

It is vital that local authorities spend the money, yet we have come across cases of local authorities underspending their discretionary housing payments. Hon. Members berate the Government and say how terrible the policy is, but their local authority is sitting on cash that it has not spent to help people who have a shortfall in their housing benefit.

[Mr Field]

Could the Minister give us examples of authorities that underspend?

[Steve Webb]

My understanding is that the right hon. Gentleman’s own local authority had a discretionary housing payment contribution of £464,000 for the current year, but has a carryover that takes it up to £522,000. I am happy to write to him with figures for the country. That is not a one-off example. It is surprisingly common. I have spoken to local authority leaders in the past few weeks who have said, “We are not spending the money we have got.” We and they need to make sure that the money that is specifically there for hardship is actually spent.

[Mr Field]

The carryover for Wirral is quite modest. One of the reasons for that is that the Government give an annual grant that has to be spent over 12 months, and the local authority is not sure how many will present themselves in the twelfth month.

[Steve Webb]

We expect local authorities to budget, but of course this measure comes into effect on a single day, and good landlords and good local authorities have already been looking at the existing stock of people. It is by definition a stock of people that does not turn over very much, so it is pretty predictable. My plea to local authorities is to use the money that we have given them.

We have given local authorities discretionary money, initially with two groups in mind. The first is people whose houses have been substantially adapted for disability. We accept that if there is a spare bedroom in a house that has been completely redone to reflect wheelchair access or whatever, it is not cost-effective, sensible or humane to say, “You’ve got to move,” and then either the public purse has to pay for another property to be done up or the people have to live somewhere inappropriate. We estimate that, nationwide, roughly £25 million of the potential saving from the measure would be related to properties of that sort. Our initial plan was to try to define that centrally in regulations: what is a substantially adapted property? We then took the view that it is better left to local discretion, so we made the money available locally.

We did the same for foster families who have a spare room because they are between foster children. Most people would accept that foster parents need to have a spare room. Initially, we thought that we would support that through £5 million of discretionary payments, but the message we got back was that foster families wanted to have a right to a room and not to be reliant on a discretionary payment from the council. We have now passed regulations, which will come into force next month, that give foster families the right to a spare bedroom, subject to certain constraints. We have also recently made it clear that where, for example, a child with a disability or health condition cannot sleep in the same bedroom as a sibling, the family can go to the local authority, which, having satisfied itself that it is a valid claim, can allocate an extra bedroom.

I stress that the measure is not a crude one-size-fits-all cut. We have to save money. The right hon. Gentleman knows that we have to save money and that housing benefit is one of the biggest working age benefits that we have. He knows that two thirds of the housing benefit bill is for social tenants and that we have already cut back on the housing benefit bill for private tenants. In the context of needing to save money on social tenants’ housing benefit bill, not paying for spare bedrooms seems to be a place where we can find savings, subject to the crucial proviso that we protect the most vulnerable.

We have protected the most vulnerable through discretionary housing payments. Of course, although local authorities can use such payments for substantially adapted properties, the clue is in the title: they are “discretionary” payments. Local authorities have the payments for this purpose and for other changes. They have core discretionary housing payments that they had anyway, before any of the measures came in. Local authorities have that pot of money, which is of course not limitless and does not cover everybody, but at least it gives them the flexibility to respond to people as they come to them. The crucial thing for anybody listening to our proceedings who is concerned about the impact of the measure is that if people genuinely need the additional room, and if the options that some would take up, such as swapping, taking in a lodger or working extra hours, are not options for them, they should approach the local authority.

The right hon. Gentleman said that if people move into the private sector, it will cost money, but that is a very static way of looking at things. When somebody moves out of the social sector and into the private sector, a social sector property will be freed up that someone perhaps paying a high rent in the private sector will move into. It is not self-evident that in cases where someone moves from the social sector to the private sector, it costs money overall. Yes, we are trying to save money, and half a billion pounds will be saved by the measure, but let me set that in context: in the final year of the previous Labour Government, we were trying to fill a hole not of half a billion pounds, but of £150 billion a year. The right hon. Gentleman objects to the measure, but it illustrates the scale of the task we have been faced with. Even a measure such as this, which has been controversial and difficult, saves only half a billion pounds, and we have had to take many more such decisions to deal with the fiscal deficit.

Good things are going on in local authority areas such as that of the right hon. Gentleman. I welcome the fact that housing associations and councils are pooling their stock to enable people to exchange. My local housing association and others have had what they call “speed-dating” events—I am not being flippant; that is what they call them. They try to bring together people from among their tenants, some of whom have a spare room and some of whom are desperate for a family home. I think of a constituent of mine who contacted me after receiving a letter about this. She said, “I am living on my own in a three-bedroom house. What are my options? Actually, could my brother and sister-in-law move in?” I said, “Absolutely. Talk to the landlord.” That was an ideal outcome: it meant that the housing stock was better used and someone else had suitable housing.

To summarise, the way in which people respond to the measure will be individual and varied. Some will be able to exchange with someone else. Some will stay where they are, regarding £2 a day, on average, as worth paying for that spare bedroom. Some will fill the spare bedroom with a lodger. As the right hon. Gentleman colourfully suggests, some landlords will redesignate properties, so that in effect there is not a spare bedroom, and the landlord will take the cost. Some people will go to the local authority, and we have put money into the pockets of local authorities such as his—nearly £1 million in the Wirral—so that the most vulnerable people can go to their local authority and make their case and be heard.

Again, I urge the local authorities to spend the money that they have been given to help people, because we have sought to protect the most vulnerable. We have sought to protect families with disabled children, fosterers, and people with service personnel living at home. We have given local authorities the ability to respond on a case-by-case basis. None of these decisions is easy, but they are necessary decisions that we have sought to mitigate where possible. We are trying to bring about a beneficial effect: to make better use of scarce social housing stock and to create fairness between private and social tenants, which, I have to say, in the past, we have not had.

Question put and agreed to.

State Pension Reform

Debate between Lord Field of Birkenhead and Steve Webb

Monday 14th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

The current position is that we are obliged by law to uprate by at least earnings, and our policy is to go further and have the triple lock, as is mirrored in the White Paper. The legal position in the draft Bill will be at least for earnings uprating, but all our illustrative estimates in the White Paper are indeed based on the triple lock.

[Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

I congratulate the pensions Minister and the Secretary of State on delivering the White Paper against the restriction the Treasury imposed on them—that the reform be delivered at no extra cost. So that the House and the country can understand how successful they have been in driving a coach and horses through the restriction, might the Minister tell us the largest increase in contribution that any worker will face under his scheme?

[Steve Webb]

I enjoyed the right hon. Gentleman’s column in The Guardian today. He imagined that we would make this pension reform work by not making it contributory, but I hope that I have clarified for him that people will still need 35 years of contributions or credits to draw the pension. The straight answer to his question is that the rebate is 1.4% and applies to a band of earnings from the lower earnings limit of about £5,500 to the upper earnings limit of about £40,000. It is 1.4% of that band.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Field of Birkenhead and Steve Webb

Monday 10th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

Through the creation of the National Employment Savings Trust we have ensured that there is a benchmark of low-cost, high-quality pension provision, which is driving down costs across the market. We need to go further and we are looking at whether the role of NEST can be expanded. We are also driving through transparency on charges, so that firms and employees can see what they are paying for and can pay less over time.

[Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

Would not one good test of who is on the side of the shirkers or the strivers be a state pension that guaranteed that people were taken off the means test, so it would be safe to save through companies? Will the pensions Minister give us a date for when we will see the White Paper?

[Steve Webb]

The right hon. Gentleman will have heard the Chancellor only last Thursday reaffirm our commitment to state pension reform, and to do exactly that—to ensure that people who work hard and save hard are clear of means testing. The White Paper is at an advanced stage.

Universal Credit and Welfare Reform

Debate between Lord Field of Birkenhead and Steve Webb

Tuesday 11th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for bringing me to the issue of work incentives. It was central to this debate, so let me address the point directly. Two separate work incentives have been muddled together in this debate, including, I regret, by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field). The first is the incentive to take a job and the second is the incentive for those in work to work more hours. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, in introducing this debate, identified the fact that universal credit significantly improves the incentive to take a job. That is fundamental in order to move from a situation where, as we have heard, millions of people are in workless households where nobody is working. Of course the incentives for the second earner are important, but those for the first earner are even more important. We make no apology for prioritising them; we want far more households to have someone in work, which is why we have structured this as we have. We are therefore putting £2.5 billion extra per year, at a time when we are having to save on welfare, into in-work benefits, thereby improving the return to work. It must be the case that if we are spending more on in-work benefits, we are improving the incentive to work.

[Mr Frank Field]

Either the hon. Gentleman misrepresents me or I did not make myself clear. I said that, crudely, we are talking about three groups. The first is those who are unemployed and desperate to get back to work. The idea about incentives does not occur to them, as work is part of their DNA. We do not need to have reforms for them; we need jobs for them. The second group is those who regard their benefit as a pension, and no marginal increase in income is going to get them back to work. The third group is those in work who are deciding whether they will work longer, whether they will work harder and whether they will get new jobs. Will a scheme that puts their marginal tax rate up, as this one does for many people, actually be a work inducement?

[Steve Webb]

Let me deal with that point directly. Under the current system, people who are below the tax and national insurance threshold and get tax credits and housing benefit lose 79p in the pound—that will fall to 65p. Under the current system, people who are above the tax and NI threshold and get tax credits and housing benefit lose 91p in the pound—that will fall to 76p. Under the new system, there will be almost no one who loses more than 80p in the pound, compared with 500,000 people who do so now. What is not to like about that? This is good news for work incentives.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Field of Birkenhead and Steve Webb

Monday 25th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

I do appreciate that point. It is often not well understood that pensioners coming down the track—tomorrow’s pensioners—are due to receive substantially higher pensions on average without our reform because the state system has been maturing. Our reforms are not doing that—it is in the system anyway—but our reforms do take the money and simplify so that today’s workers have a simpler system into which to retire.

[Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give an undertaking that those coming down the track—[Interruption.] I am already there; I am one of those pensioners being discriminated against. Will he give an undertaking that those who would be entitled to a higher pension than his flat-rate pension would provide will get the entitlement that they have paid for and not his lower flat-rate pension?

[Steve Webb]

I can reassure the right hon. Gentleman that the next generation of pensioners will be well looked after and specifically that the starting point for our calculation will be what people have in the bank—that is to say, rights already accrued—and specifically, therefore, if people are heading for a pension of more than £140 at the point we change it and have got that in the bank, it will be respected.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Field of Birkenhead and Steve Webb

Monday 23rd April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

My hon. Friend is right. At present, the level of the basic state pension is so far below that of the means test that the first slice of savings is largely offset by means-tested benefits. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor has confirmed that whatever detailed proposition we present, the level of the single-tier pension will be clear of basic means-testing, and will therefore reward those who have saved rather than penalising them.

[Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

How long does the Minister think he will get away with these proposals? If a private company decided to do what he proposes to do—take contributions away from people who have paid over the years and give additional pensions to people who have not paid anything—the House would be jumping around with anger. Why does he think he can do that to people who have paid for a second state pension?

[Steve Webb]

If we were doing what the right hon. Gentleman says we are doing, I should be as outraged as he is. However, we are not doing that. Part of our proposition is that all contributions paid to date will be recognised in the new system. At the point of transition, if someone was heading for a pension of £150, £160 or £170 a week, that is what we would pay that person. [Interruption.] The right hon. Gentleman asks, from a sedentary position, where the money is coming from. We will present our costings in the White Paper, and he will see then that we will find it through less means-testing, among other things.

As for bringing people into the system, successive Governments have, for example, credited women who have spent a period at home with children. Although they have not paid cash, they have contributed, and that should be recognised. I think that that is right, and we are doing the same.

Benefits Uprating

Debate between Lord Field of Birkenhead and Steve Webb

Tuesday 6th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

I can assure my hon. Friend that my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), the employment Minister, has quite categorically stated that Britain does not believe in benefit tourism, and that we will do all we can to prevent it.

[Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

Is it not true that the Minister’s partial statement today will in the next couple of years result in decreasing the incentive to work? If the Treasury believed in localism and had given the £6.6 billion to the Department to spend on uprating as it wished to, would not the Minister have made a statement today that increased work incentives rather than decreased them?

[Steve Webb]

The right hon. Gentleman, for whom I have a great deal of respect, will be aware that the reward for working comes from a combination of factors, one of which is the tax burden on the low-paid, and that this Government have twice increased the personal tax allowance by about £1,500. That is worth more than £300 a year for a standard rate taxpayer and, for two members of a couple in low-paid work, is a £600 gain with more to come. That is a real reward for working which all too often they have not had in the past.

State Pension Reform

Debate between Lord Field of Birkenhead and Steve Webb

Monday 4th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

As my hon. Friend says, people want certainty about the future. We have said that we must move rapidly in respect of those reaching the age of 66. However, the new mechanism is designed not just to make changes more automatic, but to provide notice periods. Young people will not have that certainty, because life expectancy is always changing, but as people approach the state pension age, we want to be able to give them more certainty. That is part of our plans.

[Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

It is difficult to think of any statement that could be more important than one that commits a Government to paying a state pension above means-tested assistance level. The importance of this statement—which I welcome—stems from the fact that the income of many pensioners is below that level. Even if we take into account those who do not claim means-tested help, a large price tag will be attached to this reform. Will the Minister consider the contribution made by taxpayers through pension tax relief, which favours the wealthy over those who earn least, as one way of financing it?

[Steve Webb]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his welcome for the proposed system. It will be financed on a cost-neutral basis within the system: we will spend less money on means-testing and, for instance, savings credit, we will withdraw some of the very small payments that we currently make to people who do not even live in this country, and we will remove some of the highest accruals for the highest earners. We therefore do not need to involve tax relief. As the right hon. Gentleman will know, the Government have refined the previous Government’s plans, so tax relief will be less concentrated on the highest earners, but we have no further plans to change tax relief.