Housing Benefit

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, because many of the spare bedrooms are used by carers supporting some of the most vulnerable people in our constituencies. We think that the time is now right for each and every Member of this House to show where they stand, because we know the facts. Stories of the hardship and heartache that the Secretary of State is causing are streaming in from every part of the country and every constituency.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

I commend my hon. Friend for bringing this motion before the House today. In Tameside, New Charter Housing has seen the number of people in arrears rise by two thirds as a result of being clobbered by this pernicious bedroom tax, yet Tameside council’s discretionary housing payments go nowhere near tackling the real problems families are facing. This is not creating new capacity in housing; it is clobbering the poorest the hardest.

[Rachel Reeves]

As in Tameside, two thirds of the budget for discretionary housing payment in my constituency has already been used, despite the council adding £250,000 to the budget.

I have heard heart-rending testimony about the tax. I have heard about a man who received worrying letters about rent arrears while in hospital for a triple heart bypass because he suddenly had to find another £18 a week to keep the specially adapted home he had lived in for most of his life. I have heard about a woman with young children who had found another flat with a family and wanted to swap, but she was in a Catch-22 situation because she could not move until she had paid off the arrears she had built up as a result of the bedroom tax. I have heard about a family with a disabled son who have discovered that the room that carers stay in is now designated as a spare bedroom with a charge of £14 a week.

In so many cases, local authorities and housing associations are put in impossible situations, trying to minimise the impact of this badly designed policy on local people. Decent people in tough situations who are doing their best and trying to survive are being trapped by an absurd policy that makes no sense. They are terrified of losing their homes or sinking deeper into poverty and unmanageable debt.