Vulnerable People (CSR)

Debate between Andrew George and Andrew Turner

Tuesday 9th November 2010 Westminster Hall

[Andrew George]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point about one of the great difficulties that occur when there is family break-up. I fear that as a result of these kinds of measures we might get more family break-ups, because of the stress and pressure under which families might be placed. In our constituency surgeries, we all see families in that very sad situation. We see single parents “without care”, as they are sometimes rather unfairly described, who find themselves wanting to have contact with their child or children but being unable to do so because of their very constrained circumstances. This policy will only make that situation worse.

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman could look at levels of pay. In Cornwall, and similarly on the Isle of Wight, there is a higher level of pay in the summer and a lower level in the winter. Is that catered for in his understanding?

[Andrew George]

Other than with people who live in uncertain accommodation—winter lets during the winter and very uncertain accommodation in the summer—I am not aware of any circumstance in which people have variations in their rents, with a landlord varying the rate of rent on the basis of the tenant’s income. My hon. Friend makes a very good point. I am afraid that the system does not allow or cater at all for seasonality in working families’ employment and income.

A further incongruous circumstance is the potential conflict between this policy and what the Minister’s colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government appear to be doing regarding the registered social landlord sector. The intention is to allow, and even encourage, registered social landlords to increase the rent on their properties up to a notional 80% of the market rate for a particular location. The net effect of that—it will apply, I understand, to future new dwellings and to re-lets—is to create a rather strange circumstance: on the one hand the Government appearing to want to get the housing benefit bill down, but on the other hand one of their Departments appearing to ratchet it up. Of course, a large proportion of people in social rented accommodation—60% of those living in the accommodation of one of my RSLs—are in receipt of housing benefit, and ratcheting up the benefit in those properties would result in an increase in the housing benefit bill.

There will be other strange circumstances. People who seek to downsize their properties—for example, an older person living alone who wants to move into a single-person bungalow to release a family house for a local family—will be discouraged from doing so because the re-letting situation will mean that their rent could go up significantly if they were to pursue that otherwise relatively selfless act. By pursuing a re-let—a transfer—their rental might go up and their housing benefit might not cover it.

Because of the time, I shall quickly canter through a few other issues. First, on the wider issues of welfare reform, many of us will have read in the newspapers and heard in the media over the weekend the comments of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Chartered Institute of Housing, the National Housing Federation, the Child Poverty Action Group and Action for Children, all warning about the unintended consequences. I certainly exonerate the Minister and her colleagues from wishing to pursue an intentional policy of impoverishing vulnerable people; I think that it is entirely unintended.