Affordable Homes Bill

Angela Watkinson Excerpts

Friday 5th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sir Tony Baldry]

I am sure the hon. Lady will have the opportunity to make her own speech in her own time.

Local housing allowance was rolled out nationally for new claimants in the deregulated private sector from 7 April 2008. The Library note makes it clear that local housing allowance

“is paid at the standard rate to the tenant based on the size of the accommodation they are deemed to need, e.g. a couple with no children would receive the LHA based on a one-bedroom property.”

I suspect that that is exactly the same provision as now applies to tenants in social housing.

[Dame Angela Watkinson (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the other side of the coin of the spare room subsidy is that it addresses not only under-occupancy, but over-occupancy? It allows families previously overcrowded in unsuitable accommodation to move into larger properties vacated by families previously over-provided for.

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[Chris Bryant]

Notwithstanding the hon. Gentleman’s voting record in Committee, he is absolutely right on that point.

Another problem has arisen. For years, in order to tackle antisocial behaviour, local authorities and social landlords have often tried to limit the number of young families in a development. They can no longer make that judgment and the consequence has been a new rise in antisocial behaviour in areas where there are now too many young families, all because of the bedroom tax.

The National Housing Federation made it absolutely clear last year that there simply were not enough houses for people to move to. I do not know why Ministers and other Conservative Members do not understand that. In the north of England, families with a spare room outnumber overcrowded families by three to one. In other words, we would have to move thousands of families thousands of miles across the United Kingdom if the aim of using the housing stock more efficiently, as the hon. Member for Hornchurch and Upminster suggested, were to be met by this policy.

[Dame Angela Watkinson]

Would the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that people in work who are just above the threshold and therefore not entitled to any benefits have to choose to live in an area and a size of property that they can afford? Is it not only fair that people in receipt of taxpayer-funded benefit should have to make those same decisions?

[Chris Bryant]

That is true. Many people who are in that situation are in socially affordable housing, some of which is local authority or former local authority accommodation. However, I do not see how that militates against the fundamental problem that although there might be plenty of housing for people to move to in Conservative seats in some parts of the south-east, there simply is not enough in the areas where the greatest number of people are affected by the bedroom tax. So unless the hon. Lady wants to move thousands of people from the north of England into constituencies such as hers, there will continue to be a problem.

What are the wider effects of the policy? We already know that, notwithstanding the Prime Minister’s original announcement that the disabled would not be affected by it, two thirds of those affected have a disability of some kind. Nurses, members of the armed forces and families with sons or daughters in the armed forces have also been affected.

There is also clear evidence that countless families are cutting back on household essentials or running up debts. The Government’s own evaluation—not an evaluation made up by anyone else—states that 50% of claimants reported cutting back on what they deemed to be household essentials in order to pay the bedroom tax. More than a quarter of claimants—26%—said that they had borrowed money to pay it, mostly from family and friends, while 3% had borrowed money on a credit card, 3% had taken out payday loans, 10% had used savings and 9% had been given money from other members of their family. That is a devastating record. It shows the poverty into which the Government seem deliberately to be pushing people.

Six out of 10 households affected by the bedroom tax are now in arrears. At the moment, social landlords have decided to hold off from evicting such tenants, but there will come a point at which they will have to make the difficult decision whether to allow the situation to continue or to remove those people.

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[Chris Bryant]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about that. The hon. Member for St Ives also made the point about people in work who are in receipt of housing benefit, because the number of hours does not add up for them. There is a real danger that if they are forced to move to properties that are not easily accessible from their work, are too far away or where no family support network is in place, they simply will not be able to stay in work. We, thus, end up shoving up the welfare bill rather than tackling the real problems in welfare. That is far from an invented problem; it is a very real problem, which I suspect many hon. Members will have encountered. Constituents, especially single parents, will have come to them saying, “I have a job. It is close to where I live. It means I can turn up when there is an emergency at school. All those problems are solved. But if I have to move to a property 5, 10 or 20 miles away, I simply will not be able to stay in work.” That is the kind of problem the Government are coming up against.

[Dame Angela Watkinson]

rose—

[Stephen Pound]

rose—

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[Chris Bryant]

I am not asking you! I give way to the hon. Lady.

[Dame Angela Watkinson]

I am most grateful. I am very pleased to report that I have not had one complaint from a constituent with a disability who has been asked to move property, and I have great confidence in my local authority. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that an adaptation to a property could range from a handrail going up to the front door for somebody who needs to get up some steps, which would not affect their need for a spare bedroom, to major adaptations such as having widened doorways to accommodate a wheelchair, hoists and stairlifts? For that reason, it is right that this should be a discretionary matter and not a statutory one.

[Chris Bryant]

I cannot explain why the hon. Lady has not had constituents come to her about the matter. Perhaps it is because of her voting record on the bedroom tax. Constituents may feel that they would not get as warm a hearing from her as they might from someone else. I am sure that she is a very good constituency MP. Perhaps it is because the needs in her constituency are rather different from those in other constituencies. But let me say gently to her that I know from talking to my Labour colleagues, a number of Liberal Democrats and Members of other minority parties that the number of people who have come to our constituency surgeries or who have got in touch by phone or e-mail about the bedroom tax and other issues is very high. Many of those are people who are disabled and who have adaptations. In fact, a large proportion involves people who have friends and family in the armed forces.