Scotland (Poverty)

Ann McKechin Excerpts

Wednesday 30th November 2011 Westminster Hall

[Ann McKechin (Glasgow North) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Robertson, and may I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Sandra Osborne) on securing this important debate and providing an opportunity for all of us to reflect that the scale of the problem of poverty in our own country deserves much more time and attention than it receives. In a month when it was reported that the number of pauper funerals in Scotland exceeded 5,500 in the past year, and when a report from the university of Sheffield Hallam stated that Glasgow was the worst area in the United Kingdom for incidences of hunger, it is truly remarkable that we have not one but two Administrations who barely feel able to mention the subject in any of their pronouncements—one largely because of their indifference, and the other in sole pursuit of their one goal, so that if anyone dares make a critical reflection they are talking Scotland down. I do not believe that either serves our country well. Only when we start to talk openly again about poverty will we be able to rise to the challenge.

I would like to focus my remarks today on a couple of points that I believe must be urgently reconsidered by the Government if we do not wish the poverty figures to rise even further. I will start on housing, and in particular the impending changes in housing benefit. The majority on this form of benefit are not on unemployment benefit, but they do represent fairly accurately those who are on the lowest level of income. Shelter Scotland reports that this year only one in eight of all housing benefit claimants is unemployed. The rest includes pensioners, carers and disabled people unable to work. In Scotland, about 19% of people in receipt of local housing allowance are in employment.

The vast majority of those in receipt of the benefit in Scotland are living in rented social housing, and a good percentage of those who are renting privately are occupying former social housing. Prior to introducing the new regulations, which will commence in stages from this year until 2013, the UK Government conducted absolutely no evaluation of the rented housing sector in Scotland, be it the availability in each local authority area of multi-occupancy property or the availability of one- bedroom houses. If I asked anyone living in Scotland, however, to take even a wild guess about what may or may not be available I would imagine just about everyone could anticipate that, outside the major cities, there would be very little multi-occupancy households and that most social housing in Scotland consisted of houses with two bedrooms or more.

Lord Freud in the other place apparently believes in some imaginary world where suitable property will spring from the bowels of the earth in a wonderful free market to allow housing benefit recipients to comply with the new regime rather than live in what he believes is “luxury”. Unfortunately, I remain unconvinced, and so do the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities; the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations; Shelter; the Scottish Government; and many other informed groups who I have met over the last year to discuss this issue.

If I take just the change in the age threshold for claiming the single room rate, which will be increased from 25 to 35 in April next year, according to figures I requested from the House of Commons Library in January, there are only, for example, 20 multi-occupancy registered homes in the entire Angus council area, but, according to an official answer from the Scottish Government, as of last year there were 100 single people aged 25 to 34 years in receipt of local housing allowance in that area. In North Ayrshire the figures are even worse. There are seven houses of multiple occupancy and 280 people aged 25 to 34 years in receipt of LHA. Where are these people—about 7,500 throughout Scotland—expected to stay?

[Mrs McGuire]

Does my hon. Friend also accept that the pressure on multiple-occupancy housing is even greater in a city such as Stirling that has a university population? Those who look to conform to the new housing regulations will find themselves in even worse straits than she has indicated in other areas.

[Ann McKechin]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely correct—that is a point I am about to make. I, too, represent an area that has a university community, and we continually have difficulties about multi-occupancy. Again, the UK Government have completely failed to consider new regulations put in place as a result of legislation that has gone through the Scottish Parliament.

Many local authorities and social landlords have progressively moved away from multi-occupancy lets due to problems with management and its unpopularity with other tenants and communities. In Angus, the difference between the rental level for a one-bedroom home and a shared home rate is £20.77 a week. For people who are unlucky enough to live in rural Aberdeenshire, it is £49.61 a week, because they are sitting in the midst of an oil economy, with rentals to match. Inevitably, people will be pushed into our cities, regardless of where their job is, in a desperate effort to find accommodation.

As I have mentioned, the UK Government have given no thought as to how local communities may feel about the expansion of multi-occupancy housing in their areas. I know from experience in my constituency that there have been examples of the dumping of people in bed-and-breakfast accommodation from other local authority areas, because those areas had no or very few such places available. I can only imagine where all those hundreds of people in north Ayrshire, for example, will have to go—I think that most of them will end up in Glasgow.

[Dr Whiteford]

The hon. Lady is making some important points about the housing situation. Will she reflect on the situation for pensioners who might also be affected by the under-occupancy rules that are coming in and the fact that suitable one-bedroom properties are simply not available, particularly those on a flat level for people with mobility issues?

[Ann McKechin]

The hon. Lady makes a good point. I know that that matter is not currently covered in the regulations proposed by the Government. However, should there be any further expansion, we would be looking at something close to a total collapse of social housing, because of the sheer numbers of people, particularly pensioners, who are living alone in properties with two or more bedrooms.

One change due in 2013 is that housing benefit will be restricted for working-age claimants in the social rented sector to those who are occupying a larger property than their household size. Do the Government know how many will be impacted by that change? Why do I bother to ask them, because they have no desire to find out?

It has been estimated from the family resources survey that Scotland-wide there are approximately 100,000 households in the social rented sector in receipt of housing benefit where the accommodation is currently under-occupied. We do not, however, know how many of those are rented to retired tenants compared with those of working age. Glasgow Housing Association, which is Scotland’s largest social landlord, has estimated that roughly 13% of their entire housing stock will be affected by just that one change alone. That represents thousands of tenants in just one city in our country.

Such a change may occur simply because an adult child leaves home, even if the family still have children of school age. A family may be forced to move out of a property that they have lived in for many years and in some instances to move many miles from the community in which they are settled—or they might fall into rent arrears, or they could just eat less, or they could not heat their home. That is the reality of the real choices that thousands of low-income families will now face.

[Mr Reid]

I share some of the concerns that the hon. Lady is voicing. However, it is important to point out that the regulations have not yet been drawn up, so she cannot predict that such things will happen until we see the regulations. I certainly hope that they will be framed sensibly to take into account the issues that she is raising.

[Ann McKechin]

The proposals are currently in the Welfare Reform Bill. I hope that he and the Minister will think again and will persuade their colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions and Lord Freud in the other place, who seems to be utterly resistant to making any changes to the clauses relating to those draconian measures. Hon. Members will remember the chaos caused by the implementation of the poll tax, and the consequences we faced for many years due to the scale of the arrears that built up and the misery that was heaped on our poorest communities. Perhaps the Minister will explain why his party has never learned the lesson of what occurs when a Government implement unplanned, arbitrary hits on those with the least resources to cope.

Coming back to my comments about this month’s report on hunger in the city that I am proud to represent, Paul Mosley, professor of economics at Sheffield university, said that the number of people using the Scotcash community bank service who struggled to buy food in the previous week was far higher in Scotland than in any other area of the UK. He said:

“In other cities outside of Glasgow the figure was 1% to 2%... In other words, there were some people whose poverty was so bad they were also in food poverty and sometimes didn’t have enough food to give to the children to eat. But in Glasgow the proportion was something like 10%.”

Mosley said that the findings supported suggestions that areas of Glasgow suffered a depth of poverty that

“you don’t encounter in other parts of the UK”.

That depth of poverty is no surprise to me, and I am sure it will be no surprise to you either, Mr Robertson. No other part of western Europe witnessed such an intense and rapid deindustrialisation in the 1970s and 1980s, in a city that already had a long history of poverty. I am in no doubt that it will take many years to reverse, but I have always believed that it is possible, if we are prepared to put in the necessary commitment and resources. In recent years, figures on absolute and relative poverty in Scotland have flatlined, but we now face a really tough challenge. Are we prepared to witness the reversal of the advances made during the first years of this century or are we willing to organise our priorities so that we can protect the poorest and do more to improve their lives? That is the real challenge that we face in our country—not the endless debates on constitutional niceties, but what kind of country do we actually want to be.

Just yesterday, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock correctly mentioned, it was calculated that the Government’s freeze on tax credits and related benefits will put a further 100,000 children throughout the UK below the poverty line. I look forward to hearing the Minister explain in detail how his Government will now meet their legally binding targets on child poverty reduction. I am also interested to know when he last discussed poverty or any related issues with his counterparts in the Scottish Government. If that was not recently, perhaps he could undertake to make a real St Andrew’s day pledge to make the eradication of poverty his priority.