Housing Benefit (Abolition of Social Sector Size Criteria)

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Wednesday 17th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

Someone who has an overnight resident carer is exempt from the policy. To deal with particular circumstances, we have given local authorities the ability to use discretionary housing payments in what they judge to be appropriate cases. I am sorry that the hon. Lady would not welcome the news that waiting lists have fallen by a fifth to 1.4 million. That is a very welcome statistic, showing that fewer families are waiting for homes because we are now using the housing stock in the social sector more efficiently.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

While my hon. Friend is on the subject of fairness in the system, does he think it is fair that the Labour-run council in Leeds has spent almost £3 million on new websites, furniture and tarting up meeting rooms rather than on concessionary payments?

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Local authorities obviously make decisions about how they spend money. If they have indeed spent it on the things that he mentioned rather than on assisting families, their voters can make a judgment on that when they come to make these decisions at the appropriate time. I am glad that he put that on the record.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

What is depressing about this debate, which we have time and again, is that it calls for a policy that was invented by the Labour party to be reversed and does not offer any solutions for moving forward with the welfare state. We should take such opportunities to get out of the soundbite bingo and to get on with making policies that might help to tackle the long-term problems.

Out-of-control welfare spending leads to the situation that we find in countries not too far away—in Ireland, perhaps. In real terms, public pay, pensions and benefits had to be cut significantly to regain control of the public finances. There is nothing just about running an economy in that way, because when eventually people need to rely on the welfare state—which we, as the sixth richest nation in the world, should be proud of—they cannot, because the governing body of the day has destroyed the economy and left no money.

In these times, we lose sight of the original five evils laid down in the Beveridge report: squalor, disease, want, ignorance and idleness. We have tackled many of those, and we must ensure that we do not go backwards, but we are in danger of placing an increasing burden on the modern welfare state while still operating a system invented a long time ago. We need new thinking about how best to deliver efficiently and about ensuring that the resources we have are used in the best way to tackle poverty.

On 18 December 2012, I introduced a ten-minute rule Bill on the subject of a welfare cash card to pay benefits to all recipients of benefits in this country, in work or out of work, through electronic means. I have spent the two years since then researching some of the criticisms made at the time, the practicalities and how the idea could move forward. I thank the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Oxfam, the Trussell Trust and the Money Advice Service for the discussions they have had with me.

A key point about electronic payment is the speed at which it can focus resources where they need to be and deal with one of the key problems that emerges in our discussions about housing benefit. The Trussell Trust highlighted the problem of people having to choose whether to eat and the problems caused by delays in benefit payments, which can sometimes lead to people having to go to a food bank. Electronic payment would allow immediate upload; there would be no delay.

It is sad that a dogmatic approach, saying that we absolutely cannot have such cards because they are equivalent to food vouchers, stops new thinking about efficient ways of using the state. If we do not move to a modern system, and if we do not move away from a system of barter like that in the Bible, quite frankly, we run the risk of making the system completely unworkable. We must therefore use debates such as today’s sensibly to consider how the welfare state can move forward to deliver the needs that people have when they hit hard times. That is what this debate is about. It is about how the Government can support people. Simply saying that we need to pour in more money and to reverse policies will leave us with a situation in which the welfare state will be inoperable because the country has gone bankrupt. We see this all around Europe, where people in the greatest need do not get the support they need.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, as a result of the tough decisions on welfare that the Government had to make and the lower borrowing rates that they have now produced, we can give businesses the tax cuts that will enable them to pay more than the minimum wage and hopefully go further, thus helping the poorest in society to get on?

[Heather Wheeler]

Absolutely. I do not know whether you will allow me to give my hon. Friend a proper answer, Madam Deputy Speaker, because this is slightly off the point, but two major companies have factories in my constituency. One is Faccenda, whose turkey-processing plant is very busy at the moment, and the other is Nestlé. Both have announced publicly that no one working in those factories will earn less than the living wage. They are taking the lead, and that is the moral thing to do.

I am incredibly proud of my businesses, my council, and the tenants who have found the right way to obtain jobs and get out of the welfare benefit society that the Opposition seem to want to make everyone pay for. It should not be like that. Get into the 21st century, guys!