Housing Benefit

Debate between Bill Esterson and Heather Wheeler

Wednesday 26th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)]

I want to remind Opposition Members that the ethos behind the spare-room subsidy has been around for a very long time. I repeat what I said in an earlier debate: what have Opposition Members been doing to ensure that their councils talk to the Homes and Communities Agency and housing associations about the number of properties they need in their areas? My council, South Derbyshire district council, which I am very proud of, sorted out what the numbers would be; how many units we needed to swap; and what was going to be needed with the discretionary housing payments. We also opened up an early dialogue with all our tenants.

[Bill Esterson]

Perhaps the hon. Lady can tell me how, overnight, she could expect Sefton council, working with its social landlords, to provide 5,000 one-bedroom properties? That was the number of properties needed. How was that supposed to happen?

[Heather Wheeler]

That is the whole point: it was not overnight; there was at least two years’ notice. [Laughter.] Opposition Members may laugh, but in two years more than 140 one and two-bedroom units have been built in South Derbyshire. What, my friends, were Opposition Members doing to look after their so-called vulnerable people?

Finance Bill

Debate between Bill Esterson and Heather Wheeler

Tuesday 3rd July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Bill Esterson]

When listening to the hon. Member for Bristol West (Stephen Williams), I was reminded of the rather depressing speeches and interventions from some of his Tory colleagues in our previous debates on youth unemployment and the bank bonus tax, who showed very clearly that they do not live in the real world. They have no idea of the impact on young people of the chronic levels of unemployment they now face or the depressing reality that this is a repeat of what happened under the Tories in the ’80s and ’90s.

The shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury mentioned Bob Diamond’s £100 million in bonuses, which, under the real jobs guarantee scheme, would create 25,000 jobs for young people. I wonder whether Government Members consider that a better use of £100 million in bankers’ bonuses, because I certainly do.

We have already seen new schemes from the Government which are depressingly familiar; they remind me of the youth opportunities programme and its successor, the youth training scheme, in the early ’80s, and of how benefits were withdrawn from young people during those years when there were no jobs. There are no jobs for young people in my constituency or in many parts of the country.

[Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Bill Esterson]

I will always give way to a fellow member of the Communities and Local Government Committee.

[Heather Wheeler]

Why is it that in South Derbyshire the number of apprentices has gone up by 80%, when the hon. Gentleman says that there are no jobs for young people? What is going on in his constituency that is not happening in South Derbyshire?

[Bill Esterson]

People in the hon. Lady’s part of the world must be incredibly lucky, because it must be the only place in the country where that is the case.

In reality, every Member knows that the youth unemployment figure has gone over the 1 million mark; that is a fact which everyone here accepts.