Housing

Baroness Turner of Camden Excerpts

Thursday 6th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Turner of Camden]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for introducing a debate on this important subject and for the comprehensive manner in which he did so.

We are facing a housing crisis for poorer people, not only in London but more generally. On 4 March, I asked the Minister in this House what the Government would do to assist families who face homelessness as a result of the housing benefit changes introduced last April. I said that it had been reported that 600,000 households would be affected by the changes, and those unable to meet the requirements under the changes would get into arrears and face eviction. The changes involved the so-called bedroom tax. The Minister, however, insisted that there should not be an increase in homelessness as a result and that local authorities could make discretionary payments to deal with any serious cases. It would now seem that the worries that many of us had were quite justified.

All over the country, tenants in social housing have been receiving letters threatening them with eviction. This has happened to tenants in Brighton and Leeds. In Nottingham, Bradford, Portsmouth and other cities, notices of arrears have been sent to tenants. Housing associations in Manchester and Glasgow say that large numbers of tenants cannot pay the increases required. The discretionary fund that the Government have said would cover the more extreme cases of deprivation was insufficient to cover the shortfall.

Tenants recognised as disabled have also been affected by this change in benefits. The National Housing Federation has said that if £30 million of discretionary housing payments were to be distributed equally among the claimants of disability living allowance who are affected, they would receive only £2.51 per week. Of course, the increases required, I understand, are £14 extra for an additional room and £25 a week for more than one room. The sizes of the rent increases are large for very poor people.

Of course the Government will say that people who cannot afford the increase should downsize and leave the accommodation freer for a family needing it. Unfortunately, as we have heard in this debate, insufficient smaller properties are available. The introduction of the so-called bedroom tax has created a new set of problems and does little to deal with the present problem of a lack of sufficient social housing.

This is occurring at a time when benefit changes are already beginning to affect many poor and vulnerable people. As a result of the current fiscal policies, Citizens Advice is obliged to close some offices, resulting in massive queues at the offices that remain available. I am told that in my area, people have to wait for two or three hours before they can get in to get the advice they need. This applies to disabled people who have been reassessed by Atos and are seeking advice. In addition, legal aid is not available, as we know from when recently we discussed the LASPO Bill in this House.

The right to buy was fine for some people but social housing that became privatised as a result of that policy was not replaced. Nor will the Government’s new policy in that area assist in large parts of London. Private sector rents are too high and salaries too low. One problem—in my opinion as a former trade union official—is that in the private sector trade union organisation has been weakened as a result of successive government policies and therefore people are not paid enough for the jobs they do. There is also the awful shortage of social housing.

We have been told by the Mayor of London that he intends to build some affordable housing within the next few years. However, that of course is in the future and there should be plans to deal with the present crisis. If there is an expectation that the private sector will provide housing, there has to be some form of regulation—some means of controlling rents—as existed in the years following the last war. In the mean time, the Government should rethink their policy on the so-called bedroom tax. I understand that a review is to be published in 2015. However, that is too long to wait for vulnerable disabled people who are facing possible downsizing or further impoverishment. As for the right-to-buy policy, as has already been indicated by a number of contributors to this most interesting debate, this is unlikely to get poorer, younger people on to the housing ladder; it will simply add to debt. Cheaper housing is required, not more young people in debt. In an era of insecure employment, it is likely to leave us with yet more problems.

The Government need to rethink the policies along the lines suggested by a number of contributors to this debate and ensure that, somehow or other, we manage to work our way out of the appalling situation that now faces many poorer and vulnerable people, who simply cannot afford somewhere to live. That is a disgrace in a country as wealthy as ours.