Universal Credit
Caroline Flint Excerpts(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)
The Government’s 2010 White Paper said:
“The Government is committed to ensuring that no-one loses as a direct result of these reforms. We have ensured that no-one will experience a reduction in the benefit they receive as a result of the introduction of Universal Credit.”
That is a complete contrast to the Secretary of State’s admission to the Cabinet just two weeks ago, when she allegedly acknowledged that people could be £2,400 worse off. I may have missed it, but I have not heard a denial of that. This has happened because of the former Chancellor’s—now editor or something, with a number of other jobs—£3 billion raid on the UC pot in the 2015 Budget. The Budget on 29 October gives the Government the opportunity to put this money back in and get things back on an even keel, and that is my first ask.
My second ask is that the Secretary of State considers the issue of rent arrears. St Leger Homes, which manages 21,000 homes for Doncaster Council, advises me that there are over 2,400 council tenants on UC in Doncaster. Over three quarters of them are in rent arrears. UC has added another £190 to the average person’s rent arrears since it was rolled out in Doncaster in October 2017. Ministers can say that those people were already in arrears, but I do not think we should dig a hole and keep on digging; they must deal with the problem that UC has compounded this problem not only on the tenants, but on the social housing landlord, who relies on those rents to help to support repairs and, we hope, the building of new social homes.
St Leger Homes also told me that when it slightly changes the rent across the board, each and every household on the list has to inform the DWP; that is another issue that affects arrears. This then creates extra work for the landlords who have to confirm the changes. The DWP has created a “tolerance” limit, which means that if the rent changes by just a little the landlord does not need to confirm the tenant’s rent change. That is welcome, but the system worked better before. During UC’s “live service”, landlords could upload a schedule of rent changes so that the DWP knew automatically whose rent was going up and when. Now that has gone. Why cannot the Department allow organisations such as St Leger to let it know of changes and allow a data transfer so that technology can play its part, thus relieving individuals of the need to inform the DWP, with all the errors that can result?
My third ask is that the Government outline their next steps for universal support. On Monday, I asked the Minister to tell us what resources citizens advice bureaux across the country will receive and when. I received no reply. Doncaster Council’s chief executive, Jo Miller, advises me that it had no warning of the changes made to universal support prior to a press release from the DWP. It is essential that Citizens Advice, working with others, knows exactly what the resources are now so that it can better plan to ensure that, whatever happens with the discussions in this House, people who are already on UC get the support they need if it continues to be rolled out. First and foremost, however, the Government must take action in the Budget and put the money back in that was cut.
Oral Answers to Questions
Caroline Flint Excerpts(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Alok Sharma
I thank my hon. Friend for engaging with his local jobcentre, which is not always done by Opposition Members. I hear the same thing from other jobcentre staff across the country. Universal credit is working, and I say to the Opposition, “Stop scaremongering: you are not helping the people who need the support.”
Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)
As universal credit is rolled out, the Government have announced that they are removing local authority funding support for claimants and placing the role solely with Citizens Advice. When will Doncaster Citizens Advice, and all the other branches in the country, know for sure exactly what resources they will receive, and when?
Alok Sharma
Let me be clear. Local authorities will continue to provide that support until the end of the current financial year, and will work in parallel with Citizens Advice, which is starting its work in the autumn.
Points of Order
Caroline Flint Excerpts(5 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
Order. We will come to the right hon. Lady later—I will not forget her—but first I call the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to make a point of order.
Mr Speaker
Flattery will get the right hon. Gentleman everywhere. My innovations are there for everyone to see, whether they approve of them or not, but as far as urgent questions are concerned, as I think the House accepts, I make a judgment at the appropriate time, and now is not the appropriate time. He has, with some cheekiness and a degree of perspicacity, made his own point in his own way, and it is on the record.
Caroline Flint
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. During Prime Minister’s questions, the Prime Minister suggested that when she was chair of education at Merton Council, she put money into early years education while Labour was making cuts. She was chair of the education board from 1988 to 1990, when the council was Conservative-run and, as far as I recall, there was a Conservative Government. Can you advise me, Mr Speaker, on how we can correct the record?
Mr Speaker
I think that the right hon. Lady has, to her own satisfaction, done so already. I hope she will understand if I say that I will not get into a debate about the respective local government records of senior officeholders in the House. Apart from anything else, I am not sure that I would want to stand by everything that I said or did in the 1980s.
Draft Bereavement Support Payment Regulations 2017
Caroline Flint Excerpts(7 years, 2 months ago)
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Caroline Nokes
Which indeed is a point that the hon. Gentleman could have made back in 2013 when we debated the 2014 Act. As I said, it is a long-established principle of that Act that contributory benefits are based on the concept of legal marriage or civil partnership, and this Committee cannot change that.
The draft regulations will make no changes to conditionality. Like the bereavement benefits that they replace, bereavement support payments have no work-related conditions; any obligation to participate in any work-related activity will come from claiming other benefits. Nevertheless, as I mentioned earlier, it is well known that long periods out of work can have a negative effect on an individual’s prospect of future employment. The Government therefore think it important that people are encouraged to maintain a link with the labour market. Recipients of the bereavement support payment who also receive universal credit, jobseeker’s allowance or employment and support allowance will be able to access Jobcentre Plus on a voluntary basis from three months after bereavement and will not be subject to conditionality for a further three months. Those exemptions can apply even when there is no entitlement to bereavement support benefit. At the end of the six months, advisers will use their discretion to ensure that individuals’ capabilities and requirements are taken into account, as the hon. Member for Stockton North and I have discussed.
The hon. Gentleman raised uprating. Bereavement benefits are uprated by annual social security benefits uprating orders. The basic component—bereavement allowance and widowed parent’s allowance—must be uprated annually at least in line with price inflation, but there is no requirement to uprate the bereavement payment, which has been frozen since 2001. Bereavement support payment is a grant paid in instalments rather than an income replacement benefit, so it is treated in a similar way to the current bereavement payment: it is reviewed annually on a discretionary basis. Section 150 of the Social Security Administration Act 1992 provides for the rate of bereavement support payment to be reviewed annually. Regular review would allow the value of the benefit to be increased if that is considered necessary. Any decisions on future changes will be taken as part of the annual fiscal process in the context of wider public finances.
The Government have already committed to reviewing the 2013 impact assessment. We will do so when sufficient evidence is available to assess all aspects of the policy, including its effectiveness.
Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)
Since the regulations were laid before the House in January, what consideration have the Minister and her colleagues given to developing cost-neutral proposals that could spread the payments over three years to those with dependent children? The suggestion was made by the Childhood Bereavement Network as a way to work with the grain of the Government’s proposals while allowing families to receive the benefits for a longer period.
Caroline Nokes
I thank the right hon. Lady for that suggestion. I also thank my hon. Friends the Members for Lewes, and for Thornbury and Yate, who wrote to me on behalf of their constituents Heather Smith and Sarah Metcalfe to make exactly that point. I am conscious that the suggestion comes from the Childhood Bereavement Network, which has been in touch with me personally over the last few weeks.
When we considered the proposals, as I said originally, we considered making a one-off grant at the outset, but that was rejected by both the Social Security Advisory Committee and the Work and Pensions Committee. They suggested a period of 18 months, on which we consulted the Childhood Bereavement Network. I can see the merit in considering changing it to three years, but that would halve the monthly payments in the first 18 months. We did not think that gave families the best chance of lessening the fiscal impact of losing a spouse’s income. We considered it, but we came to the view that we should adopt the Work and Pensions Committee’s suggestion of 18 months.
Oral Answers to Questions
Caroline Flint Excerpts(7 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
I call Mr Virendra Sharma.
Where is the fellow? He was here a moment ago, and now he has beetled out of the Chamber. All this beetling out of the Chamber is a very unhealthy phenomenon when an hon. Member has a question on the Order Paper. Members should look at the Order Paper a bit more carefully. I call Caroline Flint.
Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)
It has been brought to the attention of the Public Accounts Committee that universal credit is paid per calendar month, which, as has been pointed out by the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, affects those receiving four-weekly pay very badly. I know that, since our evidence inquiry, the Minister’s officials have met representatives of the union to discuss their concerns. May I ask the appropriate Minister to follow the matter up? It is an anomaly that affects a great many retail workers who are ending up without their universal credit being paid.
Damian Hinds
The right hon. Lady identifies the issue around four-weekly versus two-weekly versus monthly cycles of pay. As she mentions, it came up at the Select Committee. I know that Lord Freud is considering what the implications are and is continuing his discussions.
Housing Benefit
Caroline Flint Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)
Does the hon. Lady agree with councillors in Hastings who have expressed concern about the additional pressures that the Government’s policies will impose on their local community, including additional costs for education and children’s services?
Amber Rudd
I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for making that point, because it is exactly the one with which I am about to deal. Earlier in the debate, we heard about sensational articles in newspapers and unrealistic reporting. I am afraid that Hastings has been on the receiving end of quite a lot of that. I have spoken to the councillors who made those comments and to our director of housing, Andrew Palmer, who has done excellent work. I asked him how many London councils had made inquiries of him, and he said none. I asked him whether he had had an opportunity to speak to the people who run the bed-and-breakfast establishments that he very rarely uses—although he has had to do so occasionally—and to the landlords whom he uses for the purposes of the local housing allowance. He said that he had spoken to all of them, and that not one of them had received such an inquiry.
I strongly believe that we have been reading sensationalist reports in the newspapers. There is an apocalyptic vision of a group of Londoners arriving on the south coast, but it simply is not happening. I think it important to repeat that so that people do not become fearful. They do not have to believe what is said by the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) about extra pressure on education establishments, because that is not happening at the moment.
We hope that rents will fall. Members will not be surprised to hear that I agree with much that has been said by Conservative Members about reducing rents. The right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford) spoke of the unrealistic aspect of falling house rents, and referred to an article in the Evening Standard that focused mainly on larger houses. In my constituency at least, between 80% and 90% of people who receive local housing allowance live in homes with one to two bedrooms. The larger house element does not feature so much, although it represents a large cost. I am told by Westminster council, whose representatives I have consulted, that house prices in its area are falling rather than rising.
Nick de Bois
I will not give way at the moment. I want to finish my speech, but if there is time I will happily take a further intervention later.
A four-bedroom house will allow almost £20,000 of LHA, which is equivalent to a substantial amount of gross income. We talk about fairness, but it must work both ways. Hon. Members should come with me down the Hertford road in my constituency to meet those who are working hard to pay their rent and trying to look after their family on a low income. They should try to understand the frustration of living next door to people who may be living in a bigger house, subsidised by the state. We must bear that in mind when making judgments. We are all in this together, and we must reform and change.
The Labour Government believed that the answer to defeating poverty was to use targets and money—some £20 billion of our money in housing benefit. They rationalised that that was how to fix the problem, but it failed. It did not help; it hindered. Instead of releasing those in poverty and suffering inequality, it imprisoned many in a spiral of unwelcome state dependency. The time has come to change. Our proposals are part of a holistic, joined-up programme.
Caroline Flint
My understanding is that nearly 7,000 people will lose out as a result of the cuts in Enfield. What does the hon. Gentleman have to say to them?
Nick de Bois
The hon. Lady should change the end of the telescope she is looking down. She should look at what she can do to encourage employment and encourage people back to work, and start to take people out of real poverty. That is the contribution that she could make, and I hope that I can welcome her to such a conversion later this evening.
Our proposals are part of a holistic, joined-up programme to reform the Labour party’s policy of surrender to dependency to a future of independence free from poverty. I understand that hon. Members do not want to hear that, but they have heard and perhaps they will learn.
Andrew Bingham
That may be the case in the hon. Lady’s constituency, but there are examples where people are keeping the money as change. I will pay slight tribute to Labour Members, as they were going to stop that in April next year. Fair do’s there. However, that needs to be compared with what the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Tony Lloyd) said, as he spoke about taking money away. I gather that £15 of weekly excess was taken away last year. How do they square that one?
The £20,000 to £21,000 cap on housing benefit is fair. Some people have claimed that that amount is too much, but I think it is about right. I also think that setting the local housing allowance at the 30th percentile point is fair. It means that people on housing benefit can afford three out of 10 rental properties.
From experience, however, I would like to sound a small note of caution about broad market rental areas. The determination and review of BMRAs must be done with great care. The Rent Service looked at the BMRA in my constituency. Glossop was covered as well, but because of the determination and conditions, there was a detrimental impact on some residents in my constituency. This issue was raised by my hon. Friends the Members for Cardiff Central (Jenny Willott) and for North East Hertfordshire (Mr Heald), and it is a slight concern of mine. One thing that came out of the Rent Service review was the Heffernan case, which went to the House of Lords—some Members may be aware of it, some not. It caused a long delay—hence my note of caution.
The increase in the discretionary housing allowance has not been much mentioned. It is increasing by £10 million next year, £40 million a year from 2012 to 2015, and £60 million a year from 2013-14. This is a huge amount. The DHA was used to deal with the difficulties of the BMRA in High Peak a couple of years ago.
The reform of housing benefit is long overdue. At present, we spend more on it than on the Army and Navy combined. It is right to offer people support when they need it, and it is right that the extra money is available through the discretionary housing allowance.
Andrew Bingham
I will not give way, as I have nearly finished and many others are waiting to speak. [Interruption.] I can talk as long as anyone wants, but I am conscious that some Members have been in their places a long time and are waiting to speak.
It is wrong that hard-working families in my constituency and others who are living within tight budgets—
Caroline Flint
The hon. Gentleman welcomes the announcement of a rise in the amount provided for the discretionary housing allowance. How would he feel if those payments were paid to the landlords of the very occupiers of homes that the coalition Government have demonised by letting them stay in houses that cost so much money? What does he feel about that?
Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)
We have had a good debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Manchester Central (Tony Lloyd), for Glasgow North East (Mr Bain), for Aberdeen South (Miss Begg), my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford), my hon. Friends the Members for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson), for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) and for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson), my right hon. Friends the Members for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr Clarke) and for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson), my hon. Friends the Members for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham), for Streatham (Mr Umunna), for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson), for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin), for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi), and my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) on their measured contributions to the debate. They focused on facts and their constituents, and they raised concerns about the impact of the policies and the lack of evidence to clarify them. They asked the coalition Government to consider how their policies may lead to unfortunate consequences for their constituents in many ways. They came forward with ideas for reform. They raised concern about ending up with more polarised communities, and they talked about equality. Most importantly, they tried to address the issue.
The hon. Members for Cardiff Central (Jenny Willott), for Colchester (Bob Russell), for Wells (Tessa Munt) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon) made meaningful contributions. They, too, raised their concerns about the effect of the policies on their constituents. I am sure that the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) would have made a similar point about the people she represents.
Pete Wishart
The right hon. Lady promised to say whether the Labour party is planning to introduce a cap. How much would that be, and how would a nice new Labour cap differ from a nasty Tory cap?
Caroline Flint
I assure the hon. Gentleman that I will come to that.
Those colleagues—I call them colleagues because the substance of their speeches suggest that they may join us in the Lobby tonight—may be interested to know that the Minister for Housing referred to the Hull city council leader, Carl Minns, who is a Liberal Democrat, as a “motormouth” when he raised concerns about the impact of some of the Government’s policies on people in Hull. Lord Shipley, a former leader of Newcastle city council, said that the private rented sector had been a “cornerstone” in stopping the use of bed and breakfast in Newcastle and that he did
“not wish to return to the days when we did…My concern is that the local housing allowance changes may restrict access to private rented accommodation and therefore limit the capacity of councils generally to resolve future housing need.”
Those thoughts echo many of the comments that have been made.
It is a shame that not one Minister from the Department for Communities and Local Government is on the Benches at the end of these proceedings. Clearly, the Minister for Housing does not believe that it is worth while sitting alongside his colleagues from the Department for Work and Pensions to consider how to address reform of housing benefit and housing supply, which many of my hon. Friends and a few hon. Members raised. That is a great shame.
We are not opposed to reform. My right hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mr Alexander) made that very clear. We are not against caps in the housing benefit system, as long as they do not make people homeless or cost us more in the long run. We do not have an objection to asking younger single adults on housing benefit to live in a shared house or flat, but we must be sure that there is enough supply to accommodate everyone, and to recognise that some single people may have particular needs that require them to be accommodated in a different way. We will look at how non-dependant deductions can be made, provided they do not result in people suddenly finding themselves unable to live in their homes with an elderly relative, for example. We are willing to consider some temporary changes to the uprating of benefits so long as that does not permanently break the link between the rent that people pay and the help that they receive.
We also believe that cutting the local housing allowance to the 30th percentile will have a huge impact, which is not to be desired. About 700,000 of the poorest people, in work and out of work, will be on average at least £9 a week worse off. We recognise the need for reform but, as in other areas, such reform should be staged over a number of years and be more limited.
Bob Russell
During the 13 years of the previous Labour Government, I put forward various proposals to them in more than 50 parliamentary questions. Does the right hon. Lady accept that, had the Government in which she served listened to and acted on those proposals, we would not be in this situation now?
Caroline Flint
I am closing this debate on behalf of the Opposition and we want to consider some points that hon. Members have made. We also believe that housing should be looked at in the round, in regard not only to benefit reform but to housing supply.
Let us look at some of the other points that have been raised. We heard from the Government that housing benefit was out of control, but it was not. The housing benefit bill did go up as a result of the economic downturn because, as people lost their jobs or were forced to work reduced hours, they needed more help to prevent them from becoming homeless. In the past two years, there have been 250,000 new cases of people in work claiming local housing allowance. Overall, however, as a proportion of total Government spending on benefits and tax credits, housing benefit has stayed stable at 14% for the past 20 years.
Caroline Flint
No, I am going to make some progress.
We have also heard from the Government that their plans will save money. However, if they do not think their policies through and consider their impact on people, they could end up costing more than they save. The Government say that the cap will save £65 million. Others say that its consequences—uprooting families, forcing them out of their homes and into temporary accommodation—could cost nearly twice that. We have heard that the Government intend to increase the amount for discretionary housing payments, but I seemed to hear them say that they would use that money to pay the people who they say should not be in those homes to stay in them. Instead of using housing benefit for that purpose, they are going to use discretionary housing payments. That is a smokescreen too far.
The Government like to say that these reforms will help people into work, but pricing hundreds of thousands of working people out of whole swaths of the country, often where most of the jobs are, will make it more difficult, not less, for people to find work and keep their jobs.
Caroline Flint
The hon. Gentleman was not here for the debate, so I will not give way.
Reducing people’s housing benefit when they have been out of work for a year does not help them to get a job. It punishes them for not having one, and we reject that entirely. The Government say that reducing housing benefit will bring rents down. Landlords themselves tell us otherwise, however, with 90% saying that they will be less likely to take on people on housing benefit. That means that there will be more people chasing fewer homes, which will drive rents up, not bring them down.
Caroline Flint
The Secretary of State might say that, but I find it difficult to understand, given the question marks over the impact on rents of the Government’s plans, why they are not doing a more thorough job of getting the evidence to prove that their policies are right. I have heard the Minister for Housing—who is not here tonight; he obviously does not think it worth while—say on a number of occasions that he has evidence to back up his idea that rents will go down, but he has refused to provide that evidence. We have seen no sign of it.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich and my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield made strong points about the rented sector. They said that the Government’s policies on housing benefit reform and their lack of a plan for housing supply would do nothing to tackle the issue of rents. Let us be honest about this: the Government have completely rejected the findings of the Rugg review, which we initiated to tackle some of the problems in the private rented sector.
Much has been said about our record on housing, so let me say something about that. Two million more homes were built, there are now 500,000 more affordable homes and 1 million more homeowners, and 1.5 million homes have been brought up to a decent standard. Homelessness was cut by 75%, and no family spends longer than six weeks in a bed and breakfast. In the face of the global financial crisis, the worst of its kind for 70 years, Labour did not walk by on the other side. We took action and supported families to stay in their homes. We prevented 300,000 families who might otherwise have lost their homes—and who would have lost their homes had the Tories been in power—from doing so. That is the reality. That is our record, and it stands in contrast to the mess the Tories left us.
Many thought that bringing so many homes up to a decent standard in such a short space of time would prove impossible. It did not. However, it did come at the cost of not building as many homes as we would have wanted. I agree with the hon. Member for Colchester and some of my hon. Friends who have referenced that tonight. Let us not forget that the reason why we had to focus on decent homes and bring them up to standard was the desperate situation we inherited from the last Conservative Government in 1997.
Caroline Flint
The Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Andrew Stunell), who is not in his place, helpfully points out on his website that there were 400,000 fewer homes after the Tories’ 18 years in power. Of the stock that did remain, the last Conservative Government knowingly, wilfully and shamefully allowed so much of it to get into such a state of disrepair that when we came to office in 1997, we faced a maintenance backlog of £19 billion, with 2.3 million homes below a decent standard. Pensioners were unable to heat their homes, and children were made ill because of the damp, mouldy and overcrowded homes they were forced to live in. That is the Tories’ record, and we are not going to let them forget it.
Caroline Flint
Conservative plans today are no better. The Minister for Housing likes to say that his Government will build more affordable homes every year than we built in 13 years. [Hon. Members: “Give way.”] I will give way to the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng).
Caroline Flint
The hon. Gentleman should look at Hansard. I said quite clearly that we are not against looking at caps, and we are prepared to look at regional variations as well, but that would have to be planned and done properly over time.
Let me tell the Housing Minister that last year, in the teeth of recession, we built more homes in one year than the Government will build in any of the next five years. Since this Government came to power, local councils have ditched plans for new homes at the rate of 1,300 every single day. In the comprehensive spending review, the housing budget was demolished by devastating cuts of more than 50%. As a result, according to the independent National Housing Federation, once the homes Labour started building are completed, no new social homes at all will be built in the next five years.
Mr Duncan Smith
In response to the right hon. Lady and the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), she has said for the first time in this debate—her right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State has also said it—that Labour Members are in favour of a cap. Will they please explain something to us? We have put our proposals forward. What level of cap do they now favour?
Caroline Flint
We have said quite clearly—not just today, but in a speech my right hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South made last Friday and in an article that I wrote last week—that we will look at the issue of caps. What we have said is that whatever cap is chosen on whatever basis, it must be planned, phased in and must ensure that people are not turfed out of their homes, put into bed-and-breakfast accommodation or made homeless. The Tories have not been able to answer any of those questions.
The fact is that one part of Government is working on one track for housing benefit reform, but there is no joined-up thinking with the Department for Communities and Local Government on housing supply. That is not a plan of action for housing, but a recipe for chaos and it does nothing to help cut the housing benefit bill. It is not only Labour Members who say that; dozens of Tory MPs have been to see the Secretary of State to tell him why these plans will not work. We have heard about the Conservative Mayor of London and we know that Tory council leaders across the south-east have warned that the dispersal of people that these policies will create will place an unbearable burden on services that are already stretched to breaking point.
There is a better way of doing this. We want to reform housing benefit, but in a way that is fair and that does not end up costing us more than it saves. I urge Liberal Democrat Members and perhaps a few on the Tory Benches to join us in the Lobby and speak up for their constituents.