Affordable Homes Bill

Debate between Chris Bryant and John Hemming

Friday 5th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[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.

[John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)]

rose—

[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.

[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.