Housing Benefit and Supported Housing

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Wednesday 27th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

It is down to the hon. Gentleman and his Front-Bench colleagues to demonstrate that case to those who are watching the debate, and especially to the people whose homes and lives are at risk.

As I said, every Member of the House has constituents who are threatened by the Chancellor’s crude housing benefit cut. In the Minister for Housing and Planning’s local authority area of Great Yarmouth, there are some 258 people in supported housing and at least 139 in sheltered housing. The numbers are even higher for Swindon and Tunbridge Wells. What do we say to these residents and their families? What do we say to the committed charities, churches, housing associations and other groups that provide such specialist housing and are so concerned?

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

Surely the right hon. Gentleman concedes that this is not a back-of-a-fag-packet policy and that the Government are doing a sensible thing by collating all the information and demonstrable data as part of a proper scoping exercise on assisted housing, with an impact assessment. They have also put aside nearly £500 million for discretionary housing payments and the changes will not take effect until April 2018. Surely that is a sensible policy for the Government to pursue.

[John Healey]

We have not seen the information and we have not seen the evidence—we have not even seen the fag packet. Without the information and the evidence, why on earth did the Chancellor take this decision in the spending review before Christmas, thus pre-empting exactly what good policy and decision making should be based on?

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[Brandon Lewis]

I think there was an intervention somewhere in that speech. The hon. Lady has experience of the excellent work that those organisations do, as do I—I was a trustee of a Foyer. That is why it is important that we ensure that we protect the most vulnerable in society.

[Mr Jackson]

Is not the difference between the two sides of the House the fact that we on the Government side have got 339,000 disabled people into work and off benefits, whereas in 2010 the Labour party, to its eternal shame, presided over a situation in which 70% of people on disability living allowance had never been systematically re-assessed? That is a shocking and disgraceful record.

[Brandon Lewis]

My hon. Friend highlights the difference between the two parties. We want to ensure that we get a deal that protects the most vulnerable in society, helps them out and gives them an aspirational opportunity to move forward in their lives while getting a right and proper deal for the hard-working taxpayer.

In the autumn statement we announced that social sector rents eligible for housing benefit will be limited to the level of the relevant local housing allowance rate, including the shared accommodation rate for single claimants under 35 who do not have dependent children. It will be effective from 1 April 2018, affecting all tenancies that commenced from 1 April 2016. I know that has raised some concerns, so let me be clear that we will always ensure appropriate protections for the most vulnerable in supported housing. We will work closely with the sector, through the supported housing review, to ensure that we do that in exactly the right way.

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[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

I want to put on the record my support for the one-year moratorium that has been announced, which demonstrates that being in government is about listening to a wide-ranging debate and taking on board the views of the key stakeholders. It is very welcome. Government is about matching policy principles, such as fairness and social equity, with practical policy implementation.

We have seen the usual hysterical shroud waving from the Labour party. It is working with people in the housing sector to scaremonger and to frighten the most vulnerable tenants.

[Neil Gray]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Jackson]

No, I will not.

The question has to be, where is the Labour party’s policy? Where is the coherence? Where is the comprehensive costing? Where is the alternative? It is not there. And this from the party that voted against every single welfare change that we made in the last Parliament. What would it have done? It allowed housing benefit claims to reach £104,000 for a single year. They are the people who saw a 46% rise in the housing benefit bill. They are the people who consigned millions of families to welfare dependency, with a record number of children in workless households. This Government are doing something about that.

[Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend recall that Labour Members recently voted against the pay-to-stay policy in the Housing and Planning Bill, under which higher earners in social rented accommodation will pay more and housing associations will keep the revenue to invest in supported housing?

[Mr Jackson]

Exactly; that is a fairness issue. How can it be fair that working families effectively give a direct payment to other people in social housing, who are often not working? That cannot be fair. We have to deal with the issue of welfare dependency.

[Alison Thewliss]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Jackson]

No, I will not.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Julian Knight) said, these are difficult decisions. In the short term, they will deliver £240 million in savings. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that in the long term, they will save £1.1 billion. We have to do this, given the fiscal inheritance that we took on.

The Government have a responsibility—it was a manifesto commitment, so there is a mandate from the people of this country—to deliver welfare reform. The hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) is no longer in his place, but if Labour Members really believe, after reading the report by Deborah Mattinson on the BritainThinks focus group, that the Labour party will ever be trusted on the economy, and particularly on welfare, with the policies it is pursuing—the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) knows that this is the case—they are completely wrong. They have to understand that completely opposing everything the Government do on welfare reform, in favour of more spending, more taxing and more debt, will never deliver another majority Labour Government.

I say gently to housing associations that the 1% cut in rents will have a direct impact on all their tenants in general needs housing. There will be a 12% reduction in average rents by the end of the Parliament. We give £13 billion a year to housing associations so that they can discharge their duty to house people. They have to raise their game and meet the challenge. This is not often commented on, but housing associations are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. We need to see that they are as efficient as possible. They are very efficient when it comes to campaigning against the Government, but they are not so efficient in resource allocation to deliver front-line services to the most vulnerable tenants.

[Richard Graham]

On that point, does my hon. Friend agree that over the past five years, large sections of the public sector have stepped up to the plate, delivered more for less and executed changes that have saved the taxpayer money and helped the public finances, and that housing associations should be able to follow that example?

[Mr Jackson]

I agree with my hon. Friend.

There will be an impact assessment and an evidence-based review of the whole assisted and supported housing regime. We do not know what the final decision will be, but it is for local housing associations to stop complaining and to work with planners, developers and other key partners, such as those in the national health service—

[Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Jackson]

Sorry, I would love to, but I do not have time.

Housing associations must work with those partners to deliver the projects that they want to deliver.

I am not wholly supportive of the Government on this issue and I will tell the House why. There has to be a comprehensive and holistic approach to meeting the crisis that the demographic time bomb of older people will bring to acute social care and acute hospital care. We have to reduce those numbers. We have to use the tax system—

[Marie Rimmer]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Jackson]

I will not, I am afraid. The hon. Lady is not taking the hint, but I cannot give way because I do not have time.

We must use the tax system and the expertise that we have to deliver good adult social care and to care for women who have been subject to domestic abuse. That is a massive issue. Of course, we have put £40 million into it. Mention was made earlier of discretionary housing payments, which will assist those tenants directly. Incidentally, we have talked about the spare room subsidy, but those payments were not always drawn down fully by local authorities, often Labour ones, because of inefficiency.

I say to Ministers that the Opposition spokesman made the fair point that we need further clarity. It cannot be the will of the Government to make it more difficult to develop more extra care facilities. We do not want non-viable projects to go forward. It is therefore important that the Treasury, the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Communities and Local Government get round the table and work out together how we can deal with this.

We have a duty and a responsibility to deal with the fiscal inheritance, including the out-of-control welfare spending, but we must balance that with practical, pragmatic solutions that deliver adult social care and that are fair to the most vulnerable people in our society, whom we all care about—memo to the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle). Fairness and equity are important, but if we demand tax revenue from our constituents, we must deliver value for money. That is why I will not support the Labour party tonight, but will support the Government.

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[Owen Smith]

Is not that just shroud waving? We have heard for the past few years—not just months or today—that we are shroud waving about the bedroom tax and its effects on the vulnerable. Indeed, we have been told that it is shroud waving to suggest that the bedroom tax might be unlawful, but it turns out that it is illegal, so the Government must come back to the House to address the situation—[Interruption.] The Minister for Housing and Planning is chuntering, but this afternoon there was a welcome yet extraordinary turn of events in the House. Despite Labour Members and others interested in the social rented sector asking him on hundreds of occasions in recent months to make the change, the Minister has only now said that he agrees with us.

We should address the deeply unfair 1% cut to social housing rents which is but part of the problem that the social supported housing sector faces. I welcome the fact that the Minister, without much good grace, conceded that there should be a delay. It is extraordinary that his Government have been looking at the policy not, I have to tell my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), since 2014 but since 2011, which is when they first suggested that they ought to address the question of, in their view, high social rented costs versus local housing allowance. Five years later, they still have not reached a conclusion on what they are going to do. It is incompetence on a gross scale.

In the Welfare Reform and Work Bill Committee, we lost count of the number of occasions on which we were offered excuses as to why the change could not possibly be made, and why the moratorium—or, as we asked for, a full exemption—was not affordable or allowable. In Committee, I believe that the words, “shroud waving” were used on a number of occasions. We were accused of jumping the gun, and told that the measures would not be introduced for a while, so there was plenty of time for the Government to get their papers in order and get the policy right.

[Mr Jackson]

The hon. Gentleman makes an eloquent case. Can he explain to the House why, in benign economic times, his own Government failed to deliver tax breaks to encourage the development of extra care facilities and specialist housing facilities? Why did they stand still when there was plenty of money coming in and they had the opportunity to do so?

[Owen Smith]

The National Audit Office concluded that under the Tory and Liberal Government there was a 45% reduction in the amount of funding for the supported housing sector. That is the reality.

[Mr Jackson]

What about your Government?

[Owen Smith]

We have not been in power for six years, and there is only so long that the hon. Gentleman can keeping waving that shroud at me. The key point is that under the hon. Gentleman’s Government there was a 40% cut, and we face the prospect of the end of supported housing in this country unless there is a change of course from his Government.

There is a lot of misunderstanding among Government Members about what we are talking about. I do not know whether they do not read the briefing from the Whips or the Whips do not tell them the truth, but there are two measures that we are debating. On the first measure—a 1% cut in social housing rents—there is now a one-year stay of execution. The second and more important measure, which the Minister did not address despite the questions raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne, is the equalising of the amount of housing benefit available to people in social rented accommodation with the local housing allowance. That is the biggest, most substantive change that the Government propose to make.

The hon. Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield) said that the measure had not been introduced and is not happening yet. She really ought to read the Government’s statements. I shall read from the autumn statement, which said at paragraph 1.125:

“The Government will cap the amount of rent that Housing Benefit will cover in the social sector to the relevant local housing allowance. This will apply to tenancies signed after 1 April 2016”.

According to my maths, that is in a couple of months, with housing benefit entitlements changing across the board from April 2018. This is not shroud waving, nor is it jumping the gun: it is the Opposition drawing to the attention of the House and, it would seem, Government Members, a measure that will impact on their constituents in just a few months’ time.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Disabled People (Justin Tomlinson)]

This has been a powerful and important debate, and we have listened to the arguments from both sides of the Chamber. A number of important points were raised and questions asked, and I will do my best to cover as many of them as I can.

Our welfare reform is about bringing wide-ranging reforms to the welfare system and bringing the budget back under control after years of overspending by Labour. My hon. Friends the Members for Peterborough (Mr Jackson), for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans) and for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) set out eloquently how important that is. Our reforms are bringing fairness for hard-working taxpayers, making work pay and making welfare sustainable for the future.

Protecting the most vulnerable is the key part of today’s debate. As we have progressed with these important and necessary reforms, we have stuck to our principle of protecting the most vulnerable. As the Minister for Disabled People, I hold that principle to be particularly important. I know how important the right housing is for an individual’s needs. I am proud of our record on helping those who need the most support.

I want to remind the House that we have spent around £50 billion every year on benefits to support people with disabilities or health conditions, and that spending will be higher in every year until 2020 than it was in 2010. We are spending £400 million to deliver 8,000 specialist homes for the vulnerable, elderly or those with disabilities, and funding for the disabled facilities grant, which funds around 40,000 adaptations a year, is due to increase by nearly 80% next year. We are providing £870 million of support through discretionary housing payment over the next five years to help those who need support, and the Department of Health has committed to funding up to 7,500 further specialist homes for disabled and older people.

We are also providing support to other vulnerable groups. For example, we are providing £40 million for victims of domestic abuse, which is a tripling of the support, ensuring that no one is turned away from the support they need. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) for focusing the House on the absolute importance of the services that refuges provide, bringing real dynamism and realism to the debate. I understand that, because I have done a lot of work with Women’s Aid, particularly in the last Parliament, and I pay tribute to the women’s refuge in Swindon. It cannot boast about what it does, because it has to be behind closed doors. The hon. Lady has really focused minds, which is an important thing to do. More than £500 million has been spent since 2010 on tackling homelessness, preventing almost 1 million households from becoming homeless.

Let me turn to supported housing. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield) and the hon. Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue), who drew upon their real-life experience and set out some of the challenges and opportunities faced in this area. We recognise the value of the supported housing sector and want to ensure that the essential services it delivers continue to be provided, within the context of driving appropriate value for money. Many Members have put that on the record today and spoken about that support, which is very important. We want to ensure that the sector can continue to deliver the important services it provides, which is why we will be putting in place a one-year exemption from the 1% rent reduction for all supported accommodation. That will give us time to study the evidence from the supported housing review, which is due to report in the spring, and consider a longer-term solution for the sector.

The hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) asked a number of questions, including about what happens to rents for supported housing next year during the one-year delay. They will be uprated by CPI plus 1% up until April 2017, then reviewed after that.

The review will tell us the size, scale and scope of supported housing funded through housing benefits. The policy options will be considered after the report is published, in consultation with a wide range of stakeholders, and conclusions will be reached in due course as that is brought together.

[Mr Jackson]

I am reassured by the Minister’s comments. Will he ensure that the Treasury and NHS England are involved in this issue, because it is important that there is proper co-ordination between acute hospital care and social care as we face demographic issues in the future?

[Justin Tomlinson]

We all accept that this issue goes far wider, and we must look at all that in the consultation.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Seema Kennedy) asked me to take on board the comments from Progress Housing, and I will happily do so. The hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) talked about the YMCA, which is an important organisation. I am pleased that Denise Hatton, YMCA England’s chief executive, has already tweeted:

“It is positive that the Government has listened to the concerns of the sector and we welcome the fact it has taken appropriate action to protect supported housing.”