Universal Credit Roll-out
Chris Bryant Excerpts(7 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Speaker
I am saving the right hon. Gentleman until last, because he is so senior.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. It deals with the matter of precedent. I am sure you will agree that, historically, there have been plenty of occasions on which the Opposition have been so fed up with the Government that they have boycotted Parliament for some time and not turned up for any Divisions, but it is only this Government who have decided that they are so fed up with losing to the Opposition that they are going to boycott votes in the House of Commons. If we were to craft a motion cleverly, which, for instance, docked a Minister’s pay by, say, £10,000, that would have an effect, would it not?
Mr Speaker
What I will say to the hon. Gentleman is twofold. First, I think it better not to entertain hypothetical questions, or, at any rate, not at this time. Secondly—and I say this with some feeling to the hon. Gentleman, who should know from his own experience the truth of what I say—cleverness can be effective in this place, but it is not invariably so.
Mr Speaker
I was rather minded to say that I would not know, but the hon. Gentleman would. I think we will leave it there for now.
There is also a difference between a motion that binds and a motion that does not. Whether the hon. Gentleman thinks the motion is clever or not, some motions instruct, and can therefore secure an outcome, and others do not. The hon. Gentleman will probably be aware not only of the distinction abstractly, but of what types of motion instruct and what types do not. These matters can be consulted on among colleagues and with professional advisers, but I think I should leave what I have said for now.
Pensions
Chris Bryant Excerpts(7 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Gauke
I do not know whether I am surprised any more by anything that the Labour party does, but it is disappointing. The reality is that we have an ageing population, just as every similar country does. We all have to respond to the facts, and the facts are that, as the population ages, and as life expectancy—and indeed healthy life expectancy—improves, it is necessary for the state pension age to reflect that. To deny that is just to deny common sense.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I had hoped that the Minister was coming here today because he had seen the light; that he had realised that the women from the 1950s have been dealt a terrible set of cards by this Government; that he was going to compensate them; that he was going to make good on the injustice that has been done to them; that he was going to make sure that every single person who was not even notified by the Government that they would be caught by the proposed measures would be compensated; and that he was finally going to acknowledge that women in my constituency who are in their 60s, who say to me that they are completely clapped out because they have had tough, laborious jobs all their lives, are the very people one of his Ministers said should now take up an apprenticeship. How dull are Ministers?
Mr Gauke
I am not sure I would want to call my constituents clapped out, but there we go. The position when it comes to those born in the 1950s, just as with this announcement on those born in the 1970s, is that we have to balance the need and the desire to provide a dignified retirement with the fact that state pensions have to be paid for, and it is unfair on taxpayers if we do not have a state pension age that reflects life expectancy. That is all we are saying, and it seems to me to be very hard to argue against.
State Pension Age for Women
Chris Bryant Excerpts(7 years, 4 months ago)
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Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
We have had this debate many times previously, and it is unlikely that much that is said today will be new. In the previous Parliament, the Work and Pensions Committee report highlighted some of the issues that the WASPI campaigners themselves raised. Among them is the key problem of communication and the lessons that can be learned from that—in particular, that all those who will be affected by future state pension age changes should be given much longer notice of them, and that there needs to be a much better communication programme to ensure no one has reason to say that they did not know when their state pension would arrive.
There are the real issues of equality and European law, which some people have overlooked—in particular, to do with the Pensions Act 1995. There are also real issues, sometimes under-emphasised by some of my colleagues, about the costs to the DWP, which are estimated to be about £30 billion, with a further cost to the Exchequer of about £8 billion from reduced tax and national insurance contributions. That is a completely different sum of money from, for example, the additional funding given to help mental health in Northern Ireland.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Earlier, the hon. Gentleman referred to communications. How can it possibly be right that when I wrote to women in my constituency whom I identified might be affected, many wrote back and said that was the first time they had ever been told by anybody? That is the injustice of the situation. [Applause.]
Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)
Order. I know this is a very important issue, but I am afraid it is a custom of the House that the Public Gallery has to remain silent. I apologise.
Personal Independence Payments
Chris Bryant Excerpts(7 years, 8 months ago)
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Damian Green
We constantly work closely with Motability and, as I said in answer to the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands), we are currently reviewing the whole scheme, so I beg the House’s patience while we conduct that review.
Chris Bryant
Thank you very much for spotting me, Mr Speaker. The Secretary of State seems to think—he has said it several times now—that just because we prayed against the statutory instrument, we are bound to have a one-and-a-half hour debate and a vote. That is completely untrue. The only person who can guarantee a debate and a vote is the Secretary of State. I promise not to tell anyone else, but if he could stand up now and be completely unambiguous in telling us that we will have a debate and a vote in this Chamber, we would be very grateful.
Damian Green
In his long and distinguished career, the hon. Gentleman has been shadow Leader of the House, so he knows perfectly well that such things are a matter for the usual channels. It is therefore somewhat above my pay grade.
Jobcentre Plus Offices: Closure
Chris Bryant Excerpts(7 years, 9 months ago)
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Caroline Nokes
As the hon. Gentleman will have heard me say, we are very concerned that disabled claimants make us aware of their circumstances so that they can nominate the jobcentre that is most convenient for them, benefit from DWP home visiting or conduct their claims online.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Rhondda has one of the highest unemployment rates in this country, so how on earth does it make sense to close the debt management service—the only one in Wales, at Oldway House in Porth in the Rhondda—taking the 93 jobs and sending them somewhere else? For that matter, why on earth are they closing the office in Llanelli as well? Is the plan just to put everything in Cardiff, because I simply say, like the Prime Minister said last week, yes, Cardiff is in Wales, but not all Wales is in Cardiff?
Caroline Nokes
No, of course the plan is not to put all services in Cardiff. As the hon. Gentleman will have heard me say many times, what we are seeking to do is make the best use of our estate, learn from what claimants and our Jobcentre Plus staff are telling us about these proposals, and make sure we get value for money for the taxpayer.
Oral Answers to Questions
Chris Bryant Excerpts(8 years, 4 months ago)
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Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
But would it not make sense for the Department for Work and Pensions to do some investigative work now, when there are thousands if not millions of British pensioners living elsewhere in the European Union? Those people currently have free access, for example, to the NHS in their local areas without contributing, but they might suddenly find their finances to be in dire jeopardy and wish to return to this country. Should not the DWP act immediately? Let me gently suggest to the Minister that just waiting as if the new Prime Minister is going to be some way away might be a bit of a mistake?
Under-occupancy Penalty
Chris Bryant Excerpts(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Justin Tomlinson
I thank my hon. Friend. I hope that that is not out of order, because I fully agree.
Mr Speaker
Order. If it were, I would have ruled thus, and it was not, so I did not—we will leave it at that. I am always grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his advice, even if it is proffered from a sedentary position but, in this instance, it suffers from the material disadvantage of being wrong.
Oral Answers to Questions
Chris Bryant Excerpts(9 years, 11 months ago)
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Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
It is one thing to get a job; it is quite another to get a job that pays enough to put food on the table. That is why the majority of people who use the food bank in the Rhondda are in work, which is surely a Dickensian-style disgrace. Is it not a particularly bitter irony that the Conservative club in Tylorstown in the Rhondda closed and is now a food bank?
Esther McVey
What we know is that we provide £94 billion in working age benefits. We also know that, for the extra people we have got into work, in-work poverty has actually fallen by 300,000 since the election. The Government are getting more people into work so that they can have a job, a career and a progression—they can move forward. The hon. Gentleman does not want to hear independent statistics, but that is the case. We have more people in jobs than ever before.
Affordable Homes Bill
Chris Bryant Excerpts(10 years, 2 months ago)
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Sir Tony Baldry
Let me finish this point and then I will gladly give way to the hon. Lady.
My hon. Friend the Minister intervened on my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George) to say that the Government and Department have costed this Bill at £1 billion. Could that calculation and the arithmetic that supports it be put in a written answer in Hansard, and the figures placed in the Library so that we can all see them? This is important because it follows a decision the whole House took overwhelmingly earlier this year that if this Bill for example, costs £1 billion, then £1 billion of cuts must be made elsewhere in the welfare budget.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman can help us. The Government’s original estimate of the saving to the taxpayer of introducing the bedroom tax was £490 million. Today apparently, with a suspiciously round figure, the cost of getting rid of the bedroom tax would be £1 billion. How can that be possible?
Sir Tony Baldry
My hon. Friend the Member for St Ives sought to lull us all into a sense of reasonableness by asserting that this was just a Bill to tidy up and amend the spare room subsidy. It is clear, however, from the comments of the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich, that the real intention of those who support this Bill is to remove the spare room subsidy completely, so the purpose of the Bill is not what my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives said; it has a completely different purpose.
My fundamental point is still valid. If this Bill costs £1 billion, then given the welfare cap—which the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and pretty much all Labour Members voted for earlier this year—the consequences of enacting it will mean that £1 billion must be saved from somewhere else in the welfare budget.
Sir Tony Baldry
Having been in the House for nearly a third of a century, I implicitly trust what those on the Treasury Bench say. If the Minister says that the cost of the Bill will be £1 billion, I am sure that it will be and that he will be able to demonstrate to the House how he has come to that figure. The fundamental point, which I think we are all agreed on, is that whatever the Bill costs, whether £0.5 billion or £1 billion, that sum must be found somewhere else in the welfare budget. We cannot simply come to the House and seek to spend taxpayers’ money without that having consequences. Given that everyone has pretty much signed up to the welfare cap, one consequence is having to make savings elsewhere in the welfare budget.
When I first saw the Bill, one of the policy conundrums for me was why the previous Labour Government introduced almost identical proposals for tenants in the private rented sector—[Interruption.] I will come on to this in some detail, don’t you worry! Why did they think that it was appropriate to treat tenants on housing benefit in social housing differently from tenants on housing benefit in the private rented sector? [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Rhondda, who is probably one of the greatest chunterers in the House, says that it was not introduced retrospectively. Given the length of the average private rented tenancy, if his best point is that there is somehow a distinction because shorthold assured tenancies usually run for six months it is not a very good point.
Chris Bryant
I am sorry, but the right hon. Gentleman is talking utter Baldrydash. First, the truth of the matter is that the first measures on size criteria were introduced by a Conservative Government in 1989. Secondly, the Labour Government never introduced any retrospective measure. Thirdly, but far more important, the key point about social housing is that it is allocated on the basis of need. Our measure was completely different.
Sir Tony Baldry
One thing I will miss when I eventually leave the House is the hon. Gentleman’s charm. I suspect I will not miss it for long, but I will miss it.
I looked back in detail at the local housing allowance legislation, which was introduced for new claimants living in the deregulated private sector from 7 April 2008. Following the Social Security Act 1986, the housing benefit scheme was introduced in April 1988. As the House knows, housing benefit is a means-tested benefit administered by local authorities. It is paid to eligible tenants who live in the social and private rented sectors. Entitlement to housing benefit is calculated by comparing the needs and resources of the household, taking the liability for rent payments into account in calculating household net income. Before local housing allowance was introduced, private sector tenants also claimed housing benefit.
On 17 October 2002, the right hon. Member for Oxford East (Mr Smith), my county colleague, who was then Chief Secretary to the Treasury, announced plans for a new form of housing benefit that could no longer be directly linked to rent. He described the plans as
“the biggest reform in Housing Benefit since the benefit began.”
One characteristic of housing benefit reforms is that Ministers always say that their reform is the biggest since the benefit began, but he did seek to make significant savings.
The new approach was introduced in nine pathfinder areas from November 2003 and was extended to a further nine areas from April 2005. At the time, this is how the Department for Work and Pensions described the aims and objectives of the local housing allowance:
“Local Housing Allowance…is the cornerstone of the Government’s Housing Benefit reform programme which aims to simplify Housing Benefit and ensure it supports the wider objectives for welfare reform.”
Most hon. Members are sufficiently savvy to recognise the phrase
“ensure it supports the wider objectives for welfare reform”
as Treasury-speak for making public sector savings. That is exactly what the Labour Government sought to do. The Department for Work and Pensions website at the time said:
“The fundamental aims of the LHA scheme are to promote…Fairness…LHA bases the maximum amount paid to tenants on the size, composition and location of the household. Benefit will no longer be based on actual rents but on median levels of rent within localities.”
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) on bringing forward the Bill and on managing to get the Government to disband their collective responsibility. I agree with virtually everything he said in his speech, and, indeed, in the e-mail he sent all of us last week, which I shall refer to later. I also agree with everything the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) said, not least about access to the housing market and there being a generation of young people for whom it is almost impossible to conceive of buying a house or having access to private rented properties, which are considerably more expensive than those in the social housing sector. Incidentally, I also agree with what he said about the right to buy. Many people forget that the first council to introduce that was a Labour council in Newport in south Wales, but the key difference was that Newport was determined to match every house that was sold with a new one that was built. To my mind the great destruction of social housing over the last 35 years, introduced by Mrs Thatcher, was that when she introduced the right to buy, she refused to allow local authorities to rebuild, and that is one of the central problems that, in the end, this generation of politicians is having to deal with and the generation of politicians a decade ago had to deal with, too.
Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)
This Bill is supported across the parties, including by the very honourable Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy), a near constituency neighbour of mine. Does that not show that this is not a partisan debate, and that feeling runs across the political spectrum against this unfair and discriminatory tax?
Chris Bryant
I think that most of my speech is going to be fairly partisan, so I am not sure I can entirely agree with my hon. Friend on that.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, and it is always a pleasure to listen to his speeches, but in his criticism of Margaret Thatcher is he saying that he regrets the fact that millions of people were able to buy their own houses and be property owners, which is surely a great thing that the Conservatives achieved?
Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman should listen more carefully to my speeches. I was always in favour of the right to buy scheme and enabling people to buy, and live in, their home—an Englishman’s home is his castle and all of that kind of stuff, and that applies equally to the Scots, Welsh and Irish—but local authorities were not allowed to replace that housing stock with social housing, and we set ourselves a long-term economic problem from which we have still to recover. If the hon. Gentleman wants to have another go and attack me by saying the Labour Government did not do enough when we were in power, he is absolutely right: we did not, and we acknowledge that, which is why one of our key commitments is to guarantee that by the end of a Labour Government in 2020—by that general election—we will be building 200,000 properties in the United Kingdom.
Chris Bryant
If the hon. Gentleman does not mind, I will make a little progress.
The bedroom tax was ill prepared and it has been very poorly implemented by the Government. It is riddled with logical inconsistencies—as we have heard several times already today—and it has a central injustice at its very heart: the poor and the vulnerable are being made to pay for a recession that was caused by irresponsible lending not by them but by the wealthy in the City of London and in other countries around the world.
Some Government policies introduced since 2010 have been incompetent, and others, I believe, have been unfair, but this one manages to combine unfairness and incompetence to a phenomenal degree—quite a feat—and I am delighted that not only the two hon. Members from the Liberal party who have already spoken will be joining us in supporting that conclusion today, but that, I hope, all the other Liberal Democrat Members will do so as well. What particularly galls me and many on the Opposition Benches is that this was not only predictable but was predicted by countless Members of this House and by countless organisations—the National Housing Federation, the Local Government Association, local authorities up and down the land, individuals coming forward to newspapers—yet all the warnings were completely ignored.
I am sure the Conservative Minister will tell us that the aim of the bedroom tax is solely to end overcrowding in the social housing sector—the hon. Member for Hornchurch and Upminster (Dame Angela Watkinson) was, I think, trying to suggest that earlier. The declared aim was to force the nation to use the social housing stock more efficiently. I am sorry, but I simply distrust Conservatives talking about the social housing sector. We now have the lowest number of social housing completions in 20 years. I have already talked about the way in which the right to buy was implemented. In 2010, one of the first things this Government did was to slash the affordable housing budget by 60%. How on earth can people make an argument in favour of social housing when they have just slashed its budget by 60%?
From the outset, the Government knew that the vast majority of people would not be able to move into smaller accommodation—not because they did not want to move, but simply because there were no other suitable properties. Indeed, such is the cynicism of this Government that that was factored into the original financial assumptions that they made. They did not presume that 75% of the people affected by the bedroom tax would move, or 50% or even 20%. Their working assumption was that fewer than one in 10 families affected would be able to move to a suitable property, yet they went ahead with their retrospective change to a benefit that goes to hundreds of thousands of people who are in work. That is another element that galls me. So often, the rhetoric—from Conservative Ministers in particular—has suggested that this is all about the workshy, but actually a great many people in receipt of housing benefit are in work. It is the matching of housing benefit and work that makes work pay and makes it possible for those people to work.
The Government’s own evaluation, published this July, makes really depressing reading on this very point. Just 4.5% of those affected by the bedroom tax moved within six months. In the areas with the fewest people affected, a higher percentage—some 16%—moved, but in some areas, the numbers were even lower. The Secretary of State seems to think that that represents a great success, but I disagree. It points to the real problem, which is that there simply are not enough suitable smaller properties to move into, and that the areas with the highest number of people affected have the fewest properties for them to move into. In other words, the poorest communities in this country are the worst hit, through absolutely no fault of their own. That means that, at a time of real financial hardship, money is being deliberately siphoned off from the poor at the rate of £14 or £22 a week.
Ian Swales
The hon. Gentleman represents a community similar to mine. Is he aware that this policy has created a new form of housing blight, in which we have three-bedroom properties boarded up while people requiring one-bedroom and two-bedroom properties are on the waiting list?
Chris Bryant
Notwithstanding the hon. Gentleman’s voting record in Committee, he is absolutely right on that point.
Another problem has arisen. For years, in order to tackle antisocial behaviour, local authorities and social landlords have often tried to limit the number of young families in a development. They can no longer make that judgment and the consequence has been a new rise in antisocial behaviour in areas where there are now too many young families, all because of the bedroom tax.
The National Housing Federation made it absolutely clear last year that there simply were not enough houses for people to move to. I do not know why Ministers and other Conservative Members do not understand that. In the north of England, families with a spare room outnumber overcrowded families by three to one. In other words, we would have to move thousands of families thousands of miles across the United Kingdom if the aim of using the housing stock more efficiently, as the hon. Member for Hornchurch and Upminster suggested, were to be met by this policy.
Dame Angela Watkinson
Would the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that people in work who are just above the threshold and therefore not entitled to any benefits have to choose to live in an area and a size of property that they can afford? Is it not only fair that people in receipt of taxpayer-funded benefit should have to make those same decisions?
Chris Bryant
That is true. Many people who are in that situation are in socially affordable housing, some of which is local authority or former local authority accommodation. However, I do not see how that militates against the fundamental problem that although there might be plenty of housing for people to move to in Conservative seats in some parts of the south-east, there simply is not enough in the areas where the greatest number of people are affected by the bedroom tax. So unless the hon. Lady wants to move thousands of people from the north of England into constituencies such as hers, there will continue to be a problem.
What are the wider effects of the policy? We already know that, notwithstanding the Prime Minister’s original announcement that the disabled would not be affected by it, two thirds of those affected have a disability of some kind. Nurses, members of the armed forces and families with sons or daughters in the armed forces have also been affected.
There is also clear evidence that countless families are cutting back on household essentials or running up debts. The Government’s own evaluation—not an evaluation made up by anyone else—states that 50% of claimants reported cutting back on what they deemed to be household essentials in order to pay the bedroom tax. More than a quarter of claimants—26%—said that they had borrowed money to pay it, mostly from family and friends, while 3% had borrowed money on a credit card, 3% had taken out payday loans, 10% had used savings and 9% had been given money from other members of their family. That is a devastating record. It shows the poverty into which the Government seem deliberately to be pushing people.
Six out of 10 households affected by the bedroom tax are now in arrears. At the moment, social landlords have decided to hold off from evicting such tenants, but there will come a point at which they will have to make the difficult decision whether to allow the situation to continue or to remove those people.
Mr Ward
There is also a knock-on effect, in that the increase in arrears leads to an increase in the cost of borrowing for social housing providers, and the composition of housing stock differs from area to area. In some areas where families were unwilling to move into blocks of flats, many of the flats remained empty. Single people were then encouraged to move into the empty flats, but following the introduction of this policy were told that they would have to pay extra money to stay there. They were encouraged to move into them, but then found themselves at a disadvantage.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. I do not need to reiterate it, except to say that that is why I find the retrospective element of the policy’s application to be one of its cruellest aspects.
Simon Kirby (Brighton, Kemptown) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman talks about difficult decisions. Did he vote for the benefits cap? If so, what other benefits that affect my constituents is he planning to cut?
Chris Bryant
Of course we voted for the overall benefits cap. I want to cut the cost of welfare in this country, but the best way of doing that is to ensure that the minimum wage and wages in general catch up with inflation. However, we have had inflation ahead of wages for every month except one since this Government came to power in 2010, which is making that a darn sight more difficult to achieve.
Mr Harper
As usual, the hon. Gentleman is making a speech that is very rhetorical but rather short on facts. The rate for overall rent collection by housing associations is 98%. Rent arrears for housing associations have actually fallen, rather than gone up, for two quarters in a row between September last year and March this year. On the latest data, they are still lower than they were last September. They have not gone up, as was suggested. Homelessness is down, arrears are down and rent collection is at 98%, so what he is saying is simply not true.
Chris Bryant
To be honest, I am always a bit dubious about this particular Minister’s use of statistics. I remember the days when he boldly stood at the Dispatch Box as Immigration Minister and told us that we did not have to worry about net migration because it was falling dramatically, and that we would be able to see that when the figures were placed in the public domain. I think it was last Thursday when we were shown that net migration had risen by 38%. Admittedly, he had stopped being Immigration Minister by then, but—[Interruption.] The truth is that, according to the Government’s own evaluation, one in five people affected are in arrears because they have not yet been able to pay any of their bedroom tax, and that another 29% have not been able to pay all of it. So the honest truth is that one in four of the people in social housing are in arrears. That is a long-term problem that will undermine the whole of the social housing sector.
Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way, and I apologise to the House for my late arrival this morning, which was due to the west coast main line train service. He just mentioned arrears. I can guarantee that such arrears have increased in my constituency and many others, and that that is having a detrimental effect on the health of the people involved. Mental health issues in Walton have gone up exponentially. Does he agree that that is one of the unforeseen disgraces of this pernicious tax?
Chris Bryant
I would agree with my hon. Friend, except for his use of the word “unforeseen”, as this was completely foreseeable and indeed completely foreseen by every organisation in the land, apart from the Government. I sometimes think to myself that blindness is one thing but wilful blindness in politics is disgraceful beyond measure, and that is what has been shown on this.
Chris Bryant
I want to make a bit more progress, because I know that lots of people want to speak. I hope the hon. Gentleman does not mind.
The Government will no doubt argue that they have made allowances for such instances of hardship as have been mentioned in the debate through the discretionary housing payments, but those have been fraught with problems. I gently suggest that the clue is in the word “discretionary”; one local authority may hold back, either at the beginning of the year or throughout the year, because they do not know what demand there will be, whereas another authority, possibly a neighbouring one, will open its hands far more swiftly. So two families divided by a local authority boundary will have had completely different results when they made claims, and that is for those who know about the right to make a claim. The situation has not been helped by the completely uneven allocation of cash. Redcar and Cleveland’s authority received £400,000 for 2,313 applications, which works out at £181 each, whereas Tory Wandsworth council—surprise, surprise—received £1.83 million to divvy up between fewer applications, just 1,629, which works out at £1,129 each. When the Government are being incompetent, they could at least be incompetent in a fair way.
Another element of discretion is involved in all this. The total funding made available for 2014-15 under the discretionary housing payments was £165 million, and the original allocation for 2013-14 was £155 million, which was then increased to £180 million. But local authorities are permitted to contribute two and a half times the Government contribution to this, so in 2013-14, 85 English local authorities, 15 Welsh local authorities and 27 Scottish local authorities felt that the problem was so severe in their area that they had to spend more than the contribution provided by the Department for Work and Pensions. That works out as a third of all local authorities across the United Kingdom, 55% of authorities in Wales and 84% of those in Scotland. So, yet again, the poorest local authorities in the land are forced to rob Peter to allow Paul to pay Iain. Local authorities have therefore had to close libraries and swimming pools, and cut services—those have all been slashed to pay for a Conservative ideology-driven policy.
The Government’s evaluation highlighted a range of other problems. It said:
“local authorities struggle to make long-term plans for this resource”.
It made criticisms, saying:
“There was some variation in who was assisted, even within a local authority”.
It also talked about:
“Uncertainties around both future demand and the size/availability of the fund”.
That did not help, not least because
“the 2014-15 allocation was only announced in January 2014”.
In addition, many have pointed out that disabled people in adapted homes have not always been awarded discretionary housing payments because disability benefits, which are intended to help with some of the extra costs of having a long-term disability or health condition, can cause them to fail means tests based on their income.
Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
The hon. Gentleman rightly reminds us of the human side of all this. Sadly, I have to tell hon. Members that a severely disabled constituent of mine committed suicide having been turned down for her discretionary housing benefit. I believe we would have won the appeal, with everybody supporting it, but unfortunately that was the last straw in her life.
Chris Bryant
The right hon. Lady makes a very fair point, and I suspect that many Labour Members, if not Members around the House, can cite distressing cases where people, particularly those with mental health problems—they are expressly referred to in the Government’s evaluation—have not known how to make an original claim for discretionary housing payment, do not understand the rules and have been very much left out in the cold. Her constituent is not the only one who has taken their own life because of this.
John Hemming
Does the shadow Minister agree that because substantially what the Bill does is formalise what is currently mainly paid through discretionary housing payments, there will not be any substantial additional cost as a result of it?
Chris Bryant
Those are the kinds of issues we need to discuss in Committee. However, as I said earlier, I am profoundly distrustful about this, as one thing I have learnt in my time in the House is that when a Minister stands at the Dispatch Box when the debate is already going on and says that something is going to cost £1 billion, the figure has normally been invented the night before when someone was desperate to come up with something. The figure is suspiciously round.
Chris Bryant
If hon. Members do not mind, I am going to move on because I am sure they will want to make contributions of their own.
I have referred to some of the elements of the unfairness, but the incompetence in how the policy has been advanced has also angered many of us. I am talking not only about the dodgy statistics, but the fact that, as the hon. Member for St Ives said, the original savings figure of £490 million has been downgraded and downgraded. It has been questioned by the National Housing Federation, the National Audit Office and a range of different bodies, and in some areas it is pretty uncertain that any saving will be made at all. Of course there was also the loophole. So, again, when the Minister stands up to tell us a decided figure of £1 billion, I merely say to him that he does not even know how many people were affected by the loophole. He does not even know how much that has cost, and that has already come into operation. So I do not understand how he can make wild accusations about the cost of the Bill on the basis of a calculation done on the back of a fag packet.
Other elements of the incompetence of the policy have already been referred to by my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford). Many people are being forced out of properties that have been specifically adapted for them in order to go to smaller properties, which end up being more expensive because they are in the private sector or more expensive in the social sector because the local authority has to re-adapt another property. Adaptations that were made specifically for one person are not necessarily right for another person, so we see a waste of time, energy and money.
Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)
I wholly agree with what my hon. Friend says. I introduced a ten-minute rule Bill in the previous Session which exactly highlighted the costs for domestic violence victims and the adaptations to their homes, and it simply does not make good financial sense not to have these exemptions.
Chris Bryant
My hon. Friend is absolutely right about that. The hon. Member for St Ives also made the point about people in work who are in receipt of housing benefit, because the number of hours does not add up for them. There is a real danger that if they are forced to move to properties that are not easily accessible from their work, are too far away or where no family support network is in place, they simply will not be able to stay in work. We, thus, end up shoving up the welfare bill rather than tackling the real problems in welfare. That is far from an invented problem; it is a very real problem, which I suspect many hon. Members will have encountered. Constituents, especially single parents, will have come to them saying, “I have a job. It is close to where I live. It means I can turn up when there is an emergency at school. All those problems are solved. But if I have to move to a property 5, 10 or 20 miles away, I simply will not be able to stay in work.” That is the kind of problem the Government are coming up against.
Chris Bryant
I cannot remember whether I gave way to the hon. Lady earlier, but she is so appealing—
Dame Angela Watkinson
I am most grateful. I am very pleased to report that I have not had one complaint from a constituent with a disability who has been asked to move property, and I have great confidence in my local authority. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that an adaptation to a property could range from a handrail going up to the front door for somebody who needs to get up some steps, which would not affect their need for a spare bedroom, to major adaptations such as having widened doorways to accommodate a wheelchair, hoists and stairlifts? For that reason, it is right that this should be a discretionary matter and not a statutory one.
Chris Bryant
I cannot explain why the hon. Lady has not had constituents come to her about the matter. Perhaps it is because of her voting record on the bedroom tax. Constituents may feel that they would not get as warm a hearing from her as they might from someone else. I am sure that she is a very good constituency MP. Perhaps it is because the needs in her constituency are rather different from those in other constituencies. But let me say gently to her that I know from talking to my Labour colleagues, a number of Liberal Democrats and Members of other minority parties that the number of people who have come to our constituency surgeries or who have got in touch by phone or e-mail about the bedroom tax and other issues is very high. Many of those are people who are disabled and who have adaptations. In fact, a large proportion involves people who have friends and family in the armed forces.
Chris Bryant
I will not give way to the hon. Lady because I hope to get to the end of my speech very soon. Notwithstanding that, I feel that I must give way to my hon. Friend.
Stephen Pound
I am overcome by my hon. Friend’s generosity and tolerance. The previous intervention referred to handrails. My brother’s case is very different. He has a separate room that has been supplied with a different water supply for his dialysis. Does my hon. Friend not agree that the real cruelty of the discretionary regime is that it is precisely that—discretionary. It is not good enough to say that money has been allocated for the next financial year, because the principle remains in place. The anxiety of those people who live in adapted properties and who can only see that sword of Damocles hanging over their heads is one of the cruellest and most brutal aspects of this incompetent legislation.
Chris Bryant
I should have trusted my hon. Friend all along. He is absolutely right. I visited a man in Birmingham who was in a situation similar to that described by my hon. Friend. In my constituency, I have had several people who have required a second room for dialysis equipment. There is a wide range of situations out there. For example, one partner in a couple may have a disability which means that they are not able to sleep in the same bed and the same room. Those people on an annual basis have to go through the whole business of explaining again to their local authority, civil servants and council officials why they are not sleeping in the same room. That is degrading and unfair. It makes it seem as if this is an act of charity by Government, whereas in fact the way in which this legislation has been drafted is exactly the opposite of charity. As my hon. Friend said, the word “discretionary” is one of the cruellest elements of the whole thing.
Chris Bryant
I will give way to the hon. Lady, and that will be the last intervention that I take.
Tessa Munt
I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman. Let me pick up on the point that he made. There is no automatic exclusion for people who have to sleep in separate bedrooms for medical reasons. I have had an ongoing correspondence with the Minister for welfare reform. He said that disabled adults are
“able to exercise a greater degree of choice”
than children, and can
“enter into living arrangements knowing that they may have to compromise their individual needs.”
I do not understand how it can possibly be the case that these sorts of couples either have to take in a tenant in the bedroom that is not spare or that they should separate in order to have their accommodation needs met. That is just absurd.
Chris Bryant
I am glad that I gave way to the hon. Lady, because she made a very fair point. In all honesty, if I were to take any single one of the Conservative Members of the House who will vote against this Bill today to meet any of the kind of constituents that we are talking about, their hearts would be changed. That is why I hope that, in the end, we will be able to get rid of the bedroom tax in its entirety. We will support the Bill today. I congratulate the hon. Member for St Ives on bringing it forward, but in the end I want to scrap the bedroom tax, and that is what a Labour Government will do if we are elected. If this Bill is allowed to go to Committee, I hope that the hon. Lady and others will support amendments that strengthen the move in that direction, rather than amendments that might pull us in a different direction.
Chris Bryant
I have already said that I will not give way again. The hon. Gentleman will get a whole speech—[Interruption.] The Secretary of State has made many allegations in his life. I have hardly ever heard him substantiate a single one. If there was ever an example of someone who is involved in policy-based evidence making, that person is sitting right there now. He is a man who has invented evidence to back up a policy without any facts to back it up, so I will not give way.
Chris Bryant
No, I will not give way. The hon. Gentleman gets to make a speech later.
In an e-mail to me, and I suspect to many others as well, the hon. Member for St Ives said:
“This is a compromise on what I had hoped to bring forward at this stage, which would have been to abolish the Bedroom Tax altogether.”
I am not sure with whom he is compromising. Obviously, it is not with the Conservatives: they are on a three-line Whip to vote him down. I suppose it must be with those on the Liberal Democrat Front Bench. Perhaps it is with the Deputy Prime Minister, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury or the Pensions Minister, who was one of the stoutest defenders of the bedroom tax and saw off all amendments in Committee, including the amendments that will now be brought forward today.
Andrew George
I am grateful to the shadow Minister for giving way. The compromise was in relation to the Bill that I had previously proposed, which included measures to put caps on second homes, but that was opposed by Labour. What I seek to do is to help people who are unfairly affected by this legislation. This is a reasonable measure on which the House can unite. Yes, it is a compromise, but that is because I want to get something through that helps people.
Chris Bryant
And so do I, but I think the hon. Gentleman also wants to scrap the tax as well. Or has he reneged on the position in his e-mail? He sent me an e-mail, and I thought that it was a personal one, so I am taking him at his word.
Chris Bryant
I am being very soft, because the Minister is smiling at me in a cheeky little way. Go on, then.
Mr Harper
Given that the shadow Minister took an intervention from the hon. Member for St Ives, he should take one from me. I thank him for giving way. The shadow Minister made a serious allegation that somehow we cooked up the allocation of discretionary housing payments on some sort of party political basis—based on the control of local authorities. I just want to make it clear that the allocations in 2014-15 were based on local housing allowance, removal of the spare room subsidy, the benefit cap and the underlying £20 million a year that is not related to welfare reform. Each element is based on the affected caseload in each local authority area and on the average loss. The reason why there may be higher amounts in London is that London borough rents for social housing are higher on average, and the benefit cap losses are greater. That is the reason. It is nothing to do with the party political control of the local authority, and I hope that he withdraws that appalling allegation.
Chris Bryant
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have heard it all before.
Let us go back to the Liberal Democrats. There is of course more rejoicing in heaven when one sinner, or one party, repenteth—[Interruption.] I am not talking about the hon. Members for St Ives or for Westmorland and Lonsdale because they are slightly saintly in this regard. I hope that we will see an act of mass repentance led by the Liberal Democrat Chief Whip today, including the Pensions Minister, who declared in Committee that all the exemptions we are considering today were “absurd”, the hon. Member for Cardiff Central (Jenny Willott), who is now a Whip, the hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales) who, despite making charming speeches in Committee, voted against the exemptions, and the whole bang shoot of them who voted for the tax, voted against amendments and voted against our Opposition day motions on 13 November 2013 in this House and in the Lords. I love them all and I am delighted to hope that they will all vote with us—or rather that we will vote with them—en masse later.
The bedroom tax has pushed the poor further into poverty. I believe that it is at the heart of the malaise of Tory Britain, with millions in arrears, millions relying on food banks, millions having to choose between heating and eating, millions on low wages that have never caught up with inflation and millions on zero-hours contracts desperate to work more hours—two nations if ever there was such a thing. That is why we should scrap the bedroom tax. We will vote for this Bill today and we will try to amend it in Committee. If that fails, we, the Labour Government, next year, in May 2015, will scrap the tax.
Oral Answers to Questions
Chris Bryant Excerpts(10 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Duncan Smith
It is always nice to live in the past, but the reality is that if the hon. Gentleman waits he will see that this programme is running well and will be delivering, that this programme of universal credit will benefit everybody who needs the support they most need, and that all the nonsense he is talking about will all go away.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
The truth of the matter is that this programme—the Secretary of State’s pet project—is being kept on a life-support system, and all he can say is that the Treasury has guaranteed another 247 days of funding, with nothing beyond the end of this Parliament. He comes here again and says exactly what he said on 9 July, which was that this was going to be approved “very soon”. What has gone wrong? Did the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and the Secretary of State take two months going on holiday, or are there real sticking points in the programme because, frankly, the sums do not add up?
Mr Duncan Smith
There are no sticking points, but these matters need to be agreed carefully. This test-first-and-then-implement process is the way all future programmes will be implemented. I just want to quote Mr Manzoni, the new chief executive of the Major Projects Authority, who made it clear to the Public Accounts Committee in June that universal credit is stable and on track with the reset plan. [Interruption.] He said that it is stable and on track with the reset plan, so whatever the hon. Gentleman wants to say, when this is signed off I hope that he will come to the Dispatch Box and say that Labour Members fully support it and they will get on with it.