Under-Occupancy Penalty

Anne Begg Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2013 Westminster Hall

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck), who secured this important debate. The bedroom tax was primarily a savings measure. It was then dressed up, in some debates, as a way of tackling affordable housing shortages by making better use of property. However, as my hon. Friend clearly demonstrated in her opening speech, we warned from the outset—those of us who served on the Welfare Reform Bill Committee back in 2011 pointed this out at the time—that the savings would be less than estimated.

If the policy were genuinely about supply, it would have been sensible to start by understanding local housing markets and developing policies appropriate to local areas. As colleagues, including my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields, have described, in some cases, the bedroom tax is making larger houses unlettable. I must say that that is not a problem in my city, where more than 900 households have been given the second-highest priority banding because they need two extra bedrooms, and about 350 households have the same priority level because they are homeless and need three-bedroom housing. More than 1,200 families in the area need large homes, and there simply are not many. They do not exist. It is not that single people or couples in my constituency are rattling around in big homes that they do not need; the properties just do not exist.

As for those who might want to downsize, this week, 22 one-bedroom properties are available to let across all the housing associations and councils in the whole city of Edinburgh. That is not just in my constituency; it is across the whole city, which comprises five constituencies. Of those properties, three are sheltered—they are for older people, who are by definition not affected by the bedroom tax—so they would not be available to those affected by the bedroom tax. This is not an unusually dry week for housing supply; it is typical of all weeks. I check the availability regularly.

[Dame Anne Begg (Aberdeen South) (Lab)]

Has my hon. Friend analysed what types of houses the available one-bedroom properties are? If Edinburgh is anything like my constituency, I suspect that they will not be in areas to which people looking to downsize would move in any case. Very often they are for the young homeless, or those prepared to live at the top of a tower block.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Indeed, because of the nature of building at the time, a lot of smaller properties in the city, when we have them, are to be found in high-rises.