Housing Benefit

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Wednesday 26th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves]

In my hon. Friend’s local authority area—Nottingham city council—200 people have been wrongly paying the bedroom tax because of this Government’s mistakes. She is absolutely right to mention the number of people in her area who are in arrears and the difficulties they will have in moving.

The eviction warning letters that have gone to so many people raise the threat of millions more being wasted in eviction proceedings and the emergency accommodation that will be needed for those who are made homeless. What a shambles.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

I have great regard for the hon. Lady, but as somebody who used to work at the Bank of England, she will know that this is not a bedroom tax. How does she calculate that saying in effect that people who have a spare bedroom should no longer have it paid for by taxpayers is somehow a tax?

[Rachel Reeves]

But as the hon. Lady well knows, the reality is that for many of these people it is not a spare bedroom. It is the bedroom that their sons and daughters who serve in the armed forces stay in when they come home; it is the bedroom that their sons and daughters stay in when they are home from university; it is the bedroom that is used to store the dialysis equipment; and it is the bedroom that the carer comes to stay in. These are not spare bedrooms; these are rooms that are needed by many people with disabilities or with children. We can debate whether it is a spare room subsidy or a bedroom tax, but what we do not have to debate is the impact it is having on people. In the hon. Lady’s constituency and mine, and in places across the country, people are suffering because of the decisions this Government are making. The Government should instead do the right thing and cancel the bedroom tax.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

I despair of Opposition Members who first insist on calling the spare room subsidy a tax, and secondly insist that it is utterly unfair to everyone. What they fail to accept is that the previous arrangements were totally unfair to taxpayers and to those in the private rented sector. Opposition Members wish to preserve an old system under which the maximum paid by the taxpayer for housing benefit reached £104,000 a year. They need to understand that that was completely untenable.

Between 2003 and 2012, overcrowding increased from 5% to 7%, leaving hundreds of thousands of people in overcrowded housing and 1.5 million on the housing list. How fair is it to allow people who have more bedrooms than they need to stay in that accommodation, leaving others facing bed-and-breakfast accommodation, homelessness or severe overcrowding?

Most of the constituents who talk to me about the spare room subsidy talk about their absolute need for more space, not less, for their families. The only person who has ever complained to me about having to move out of his or her home was a lady who said that she had raised three children there. It was a four-bedroom home, and she did not see why she should move out of it now that she was on her own in case they ever wanted to come home for the holidays. Can Opposition Members honestly, in all conscience, support someone remaining in those circumstances, against the 1.5 million people who are on the housing registers? They talk of fairness and of what is right and just, but they are talking nonsense to the people who are footing the bill and to those who have nothing.

In the 13 years of the last Labour Government, housing benefit rose from £11 billion to £21 billion a year. That is £900 for every household in the country. Is it fair on working families that they should be supporting housing benefit to the tune of £900 per household?

Let me end by asking Ministers some questions. What more can we, as a Government, do to make constituents aware of the enormous amount in generous discretionary payments that is widely available, and can we do more to promote house swap schemes? Many people talk about the unavailability of smaller properties, but they are talking about empty smaller properties rather than about house swaps. I think that swaps have huge potential, and a great deal of work is being done to promote them in my constituency.

Can Ministers confirm that discretionary payments will continue throughout 2014 and into 2015? Can they also confirm that the Government have made huge efforts to ensure that new houses are built? Are they still on target for the building of 170,000 new affordable homes by 2015? Finally, can Ministers explain why there was such a big underspend of discretionary payments last year, and what they can do to ensure that councils provide as much help as possible for those who need it?