Housing Benefit Entitlement

Andy McDonald Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd January 2013 Westminster Hall

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

I too congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) on securing this important debate.

One of the justifications for the changes is that they will bring about a better use of currently available housing stock and that somehow penalties for under-occupancy will force tenants to leave their homes—I stress they are homes, not houses—releasing two-bedroom properties and thereby alleviating overcrowding. The theory might get off the ground if there was evidence that such exchanges were possible and practical; but the evidence is that whereas 180,000 social tenants are allegedly under-occupying, just under 68,000 single-bedroom properties became available last year. We have heard today that it would take an age to achieve what is intended. There simply are not the properties to go round. That analysis does not even begin to take into consideration new entrants to the market. The waiting lists are considerable. The policy simply does not stack up.

In Middlesbrough the policy will have an impact on 2,410 claimants. The reduction in benefits across the piece will be something short of £1.5 million. Of course in the areas of my constituency where people are already struggling, and finding things hard, the additional burden will be the final straw for some. There will be untold misery. I heard from Citizens Advice recently about my constituent David Holdsworth, who lives in a three-bedroom property with his wife and severely disabled 33-year-old daughter. He is paralysed from the waist down and has continence issues. His wife is his full-time carer and sleeps in the spare room. Because of his disability it is not practical for her to stay with him. They have been informed that the bedroom tax will affect him, because they have a spare room. He cannot afford the cut to his benefits, and the solution that has been put to them is that he and his daughter should move into a home and his wife should move into a one-bedroom property, breaking up the family.

Another example concerns a gentleman who lives in a three-bedroom property. He is the father of triplets and his three daughters live with their mother, but during the school term they stay with him for periods in the week. One of his daughters is autistic, and he says that she needs her own room, for reasons specific to the family. According to the bedroom tax he has two spare rooms, and his benefit will be cut by nearly £30 a week.

Some weeks ago my hon. Friend and I called at the door of a lady in Pallister park in my constituency, who was living in what had been her family home. She and her husband and daughter had lived there 38 years. Her husband had passed away, and her daughter had moved on to life with a husband and family. My constituent has been told, after 38 years, that she has a spare room and must leave. In reality, that resource—that home—is used. She is a grandma and takes the two children so her daughter can go out to work. Now she is being told she must leave the house. No one-bedroom properties are available to her, so her only option is to go miles away, and disrupt that family unit totally and utterly. That is a consequence of this terrible measure.

Anxiety is an issue. Not everyone knows what is coming, but many people are getting used to the idea and are knocking on the doors of constituency offices, and going to their citizens advice bureau. The terror and worry of thinking that they will lose their home is something that hon. Members who should be in the empty seats on the Government Benches do not begin to understand.

Niall Cooper, national co-ordinator for Church Action on Poverty said:

“There is a real danger that people will be pushed into the hands of loan sharks by the housing benefit cuts…For some this will push them over the edge”.

We know where they are going with the annual percentage rates that they may face—into spiralling debt with homelessness on the horizon. This dreadful provision should be revoked immediately, and people should come to their senses before it is too late.