Housing Benefit

Baroness Primarolo Excerpts

Tuesday 9th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Douglas Alexander]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Members should not be constantly standing on their feet. The Secretary of State is indicating to whom he intends to give way. I would be grateful if Members resumed their seats.

[Mr Alexander]

I would not wish the Secretary of State, however inadvertently, to leave the House with a misapprehension in relation to the impact of the 10% cut in housing benefit on those receiving jobseeker’s allowance who find themselves unemployed after a year. If I heard him correctly, he came close to saying that people would not lose out because of other changes to the benefits system, such as the introduction of the Work programme. Will he therefore explain why, in the Red Book, it is scored as a saving of £110 million? Either people will lose money and be punished because they find themselves unemployed after 12 months, or they will be better off, in which case there should not be that saving score in the Red Book.

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[Andrew Griffiths]

I thank the Secretary of State for giving way. He will know that one of the myths put about by the Opposition was that councils in London were already booking bed and breakfasts across the city to cope with the consequences of this policy. I draw the Secretary of State’s attention to a website called FullFact.org, which has made some freedom of information requests to local authorities in London. I shall pick just a few. In Kensington and Chelsea, no such bookings have been made; in Wandsworth, no bookings have been made in bed and breakfasts; Lewisham council confirms that it has not made any bookings—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. That was supposed to be an intervention, not an opportunity to read statistics on to the record. I am sure the Secretary of State is perfectly capable of doing that himself.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

My hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths) is right. That was based on one comment by one person, who backed it up with no evidence. The point here is that, as we are discussing with councils, there is no need for them to worry about having to put people into homeless accommodation because once we get these numbers right, which we believe we are doing, the money we will be allowing will be sufficient to cover the costs, such as for rents and school year changes, of those who may have to move, of whom there will be far fewer than the Opposition claim. That is the real point, so my hon. Friend is right. What did Labour do with the figure in question? They just used it by ramping it up and saying, “This is terrible, all these people are going to be shipped out to Reading or somewhere on the south coast”—another scare story put about by Labour. It is absurd.

--- Later in debate ---

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. I remind hon. Members that Mr Speaker has imposed an eight-minute time limit on all speeches. There are 36 or 37 Members who wish to participate this afternoon and the time limit starts now.