Housing Benefit

Debate between Pete Wishart and Chuka Umunna

Tuesday 9th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Umunna]

Absolutely; I would not disagree with the hon. Gentleman.

I have outlined some of the effects on my community that we are able to discern, but there will be others that it is difficult to quantify at the moment. We are going to be faced with people moving from inner London to our part of Lambeth, seeking private rented accommodation.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

We know that this is what the Tories do: they attack the poor and the vulnerable. But what about Labour? I could not make out from what the right hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mr Alexander) said whether Labour was for or against the cap. Does the hon. Gentleman know?

[Mr Umunna]

If the hon. Gentleman reads the motion, he will see no denial of the need for some degree of housing benefit reform. No doubt my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) will give further details in her speech, in addition to the many details that my right hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South gave the House earlier.

I was talking about the effects of the measures that we are not yet able to discern. We have 22,000 people on social housing waiting lists in Lambeth, but we have no idea of the number who will seek social private rented housing in our area as a result of the changes. I mention that figure to demonstrate that we are already under huge pressure.

There has been a lot of talk about introducing these measures to reduce the benefits bill, but we are told that rents will inevitably fall as well. London Councils, a cross-party organisation, has carried out a survey of landlords in London. I make no apology for talking about London, by the way; it is my area, and it is where my constituency is based. The survey found that 60% of landlords letting properties to housing benefit tenants in London said that they would not reduce their rents, even by a small amount, to accommodate the changes, and Shelter has found that 43% of such landlords will simply scale back their operations in this sector.

I want to finish by mentioning a matter that I have already raised with the Chancellor of the Exchequer—the proposal to reduce by 10% the housing benefit of jobseeker’s allowance recipients who have been receiving JSA for more than 12 months. I challenged the Chancellor about this at a Treasury Committee hearing in July and asked him to provide me with evidence that that measure would produce increased work incentives, given that he said that that was why he was introducing it. Funnily enough, he quoted the Institute for Fiscal Studies back at me. It is funny how the coalition Government choose to ignore the IFS when it tells them things they do not want to hear, only to quote it back at me when they find it helpful.

The Chancellor quoted an IFS report that found that

“welfare benefits can have substantial effects on the work behaviour of unskilled and even for men with high school education”.

Be that as it may, I do not see how there can be an incentive for people to work when there are no jobs for them to go into. In the past few weeks, information from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has shown that 1.6 million people are going to be out of work as a result of the measures being introduced by the Government. We already know that there are five people chasing every vacancy in the economy, and research shows that that figure is not going to fall.

Will the Minister tell us why the Government are seeking to punish people who are doing everything they can to find work? I have asked this question in the Chamber before, but I have not received a reply. There are many people in my constituency who have been on JSA for more than a year—the number generally hovers between 700 and 800—and who are struggling to find work. Why are the Government punishing them when they are already down on their luck? We must resist the divisions that the headlines are seeking to create in our communities. This is an issue for everyone, whether they are on housing benefit or not, and I plead with the Government to reconsider the measure on JSA recipients. As I have said, they are already down on their luck. Why kick them when they are down?