Andrew Bingham
Main Page: Andrew Bingham (Conservative - High Peak)Department Debates - View all Andrew Bingham's debates with the Department for Work and Pensions
(14 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Tony Lloyd
The hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I have a limited amount of time and will lose some if I give way.
The speed of the changes raises real issues. Even if I believed that rents would adjust as the Secretary of State believes, they would not do so at the lightning speed required by his policies. People will not suddenly find their landlords voluntarily reducing their rents by £12, £13 or £14 a week. That will not happen for a number of reasons.
Tony Lloyd
No, I am sorry.
The first of those reasons is that there is no evidence that rents adjust at that speed. The second and more important reason is that in a city such as Manchester—a complicated city which is quite different from the London housing market, with different types of housing tenure and different types of housing cheek by jowl—the housing benefit system is not the primary driver of rental levels. Those are driven by other factors. If that thesis is right, the Secretary of State’s proposals are doomed not to succeed. If they do not succeed, rent levels will not adjust downwards and people will inevitably lose money. Even if rent levels were to adjust, they would not do that overnight. That is why, partly as a plea and partly as a demand on behalf of my constituents, I hope that the Secretary of State will think again about the speed with which the changes are implemented.
The Secretary of State’s argument about jobseeker’s allowance was rather confusing. He seemed to imply that no one would really lose 10% of JSA because nobody would find themselves in that position. Even in the relatively high employment times under the Labour Government, my constituency still had serious pockets of unemployment because it is one of those constituencies that are the repository of the longer-term unemployed. In those circumstances, it is fanciful to suggest that no one on JSA will be unemployed for more than 12 months and fanciful to say that nobody will be hit by that 10% penalty.
Ten per cent. of JSA is a huge amount of money for somebody in that situation to lose. I hope that the Secretary of State will look again at this issue, because, as my right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State has said on many occasions, those whom we regard as blameless—those who have conformed to everything that the Government and society have asked of them, sought work and gone out of their way to upskill and everything else—simply should not be penalised in the way that the Government propose. I hope that the Secretary of State, almost mirroring what he said—if he believes it—will say that if all the other changes that he proposes to benefits are to be effective, he will withdraw the 10% cut. To follow his direction of travel, it is an unnecessary 10% cut, and it simply should not exist.
People in my constituency who are in work, looking for work or disabled are going to lose out under the proposals. When Manchester city council considered the measures, it discovered that the people most likely to be hurt were single parents and those seeking work. They are simply not the people whom we should penalise. If Government Members’ ambition is to penalise, they should support their Government and these proposals. If their real intention is to reform the system, they should say to their Secretary of State, “Please think again.”
Andrew Bingham (High Peak) (Con)
I am a firm believer—I always have been—that people should be rewarded for hard work. I am also a firm believer that we need housing and other benefits, but that they should be there as safety nets. The willingness of the Labour Government to pay more than £100,000 a year to someone on benefits is not, to me, a safety net. It has to be said that £100,000 is an enormous amount of money, which is sufficient to fund a lifestyle beyond the budget of many hard-working families in my constituency of High Peak. [Interruption.] I am sorry, but that has to be wrong; it cannot be right.
Labour Members claim that this is fair. Do they think it fair that, under current arrangements, someone paying rent below the local housing allowance level will be able to receive the local housing allowance and keep the change? People can make a profit on housing benefit. Does that seem fair? Is that fair to someone working hard to pay their way? Labour Members look askance, but it is true.
Glenda Jackson
In my constituency, private landlords are increasingly reluctant to accept tenants who can pay only through housing benefit. For an increasing number of people, there is a shortfall between what the local rent office deems a property to be worth and what the landlord actually charges. Not one single claimant of housing benefit in my constituency—and they number thousands—has money to take home from the local housing allowance. In many instances, they have to make up the shortfall themselves.
Andrew Bingham
That may be the case in the hon. Lady’s constituency, but there are examples where people are keeping the money as change. I will pay slight tribute to Labour Members, as they were going to stop that in April next year. Fair do’s there. However, that needs to be compared with what the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Tony Lloyd) said, as he spoke about taking money away. I gather that £15 of weekly excess was taken away last year. How do they square that one?
The £20,000 to £21,000 cap on housing benefit is fair. Some people have claimed that that amount is too much, but I think it is about right. I also think that setting the local housing allowance at the 30th percentile point is fair. It means that people on housing benefit can afford three out of 10 rental properties.
From experience, however, I would like to sound a small note of caution about broad market rental areas. The determination and review of BMRAs must be done with great care. The Rent Service looked at the BMRA in my constituency. Glossop was covered as well, but because of the determination and conditions, there was a detrimental impact on some residents in my constituency. This issue was raised by my hon. Friends the Members for Cardiff Central (Jenny Willott) and for North East Hertfordshire (Mr Heald), and it is a slight concern of mine. One thing that came out of the Rent Service review was the Heffernan case, which went to the House of Lords—some Members may be aware of it, some not. It caused a long delay—hence my note of caution.
The increase in the discretionary housing allowance has not been much mentioned. It is increasing by £10 million next year, £40 million a year from 2012 to 2015, and £60 million a year from 2013-14. This is a huge amount. The DHA was used to deal with the difficulties of the BMRA in High Peak a couple of years ago.
The reform of housing benefit is long overdue. At present, we spend more on it than on the Army and Navy combined. It is right to offer people support when they need it, and it is right that the extra money is available through the discretionary housing allowance.
Andrew Bingham
I will not give way, as I have nearly finished and many others are waiting to speak. [Interruption.] I can talk as long as anyone wants, but I am conscious that some Members have been in their places a long time and are waiting to speak.
It is wrong that hard-working families in my constituency and others who are living within tight budgets—
Caroline Flint
The hon. Gentleman welcomes the announcement of a rise in the amount provided for the discretionary housing allowance. How would he feel if those payments were paid to the landlords of the very occupiers of homes that the coalition Government have demonised by letting them stay in houses that cost so much money? What does he feel about that?
Andrew Bingham
Excuse me, but I do not like the word “demonised” any more than I like “punished” or “cleansing”. I do not like the language used by Opposition Members.
Andrew Bridgen
Does my hon. Friend believe that the increase in the housing benefit budget from £14 billion to £20 billion in the past five years is a sign of the success or the failure of the last Government’s policies?
Andrew Bingham
I think that “abject failure” is probably a better phrase.
I end by saying that it is wrong for families who work hard to see families on benefit living in houses that are beyond their wildest dreams.
Glenda Jackson
My hon. Friend is wishing for the moon. Government Members are not interested in facts; they discount absolutely everything that emanates from this side of the House.
Glenda Jackson
No.
Government Members also discount the briefings that we have all received, from organisations such as Shelter, Crisis, the Chartered Institute of Housing, Citizens Advice and the National Housing Federation, about the real danger and damage that these ill-thought-out plans are going to inflict on some of the most vulnerable people in our society.
We have been here before. We have seen all this before. An earlier submission by Crisis pointed out that it will cost £60 a day for a room in a bed and breakfast. Let us look back to the earlier history of bed and breakfasts. The hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) referred to the history of 1945; I was somewhat surprised that he did not take us back to the much more recent history of what happened to people in this country under the first Thatcherite regime. The hon. Gentleman was concerned about children then—